


Graveyard Shift

by Redgeandlilly



Category: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter - Laurell K. Hamilton, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, F/M, Gen, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redgeandlilly/pseuds/Redgeandlilly
Summary: Detective Anita Blake, the newest member of Special Investigations, is not what she appears. A warlock long presumed dead and undercover necromancer, she's taking every precaution she can to keep under the White Council's radar. Is the quiet life too much to ask for?Apparently so. A serial murder case brings her in contact with the last person she wants to work with--Chicago's resident wizard, Harry Dresden. Can Anita keep her secret firmly under wraps, or will the truth come lurching out from the grave to bite her on the ass?
Relationships: Harry Dresden/Anita Blake, Jean-Claude/Anita Blake
Comments: 47
Kudos: 65





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> After encountering and loving what I've read of the Executioner Dresden Series by PurpleMoon3, where Harry lands himself in Anita's body and has to learn to operate in her world, I thought it would be interesting to see what happens with a crossover that sort of does the reverse. An Anita that has to operate by the rules of the Dresden Files universe, where necromancy is illegal. Tonally different than PurpleMoon3's series as well, most likely, since it's pretty funny and this one is shaping up to be a little grim. I just wanted to give a shout-out to the inspiration for this fic. I really hope you all enjoy. :)

"Nice mug," O'Toole said with a snicker, eyeing my late night-cup of joe. 

It was a violently pink thing with a donut decal plastered to its front and Bart Simpson's hand reaching down to snatch it. I was so going to beat Kincaid for this the next time we crossed paths. He thought the position I now found myself in was hysterical. I might have too if it were happening to anyone but me. 

I hadn't planned it like this. I'd never meant to become the low-man-on the totem pole in a dead-end office job in Chicago PD. When I'd been searching for a body, my two non-negotiables were a measure of innate magical talent and female-presenting. No need to put myself through a bout of gender dysphoria if I didn't have to. I'd found both of my answers in this form. 

Detective Anita Blake was dying when we crossed paths. An air embolism after being stuck by a needle by the junkie she'd been trying to save. Swapping her out had been a mercy. I knew how to take pain, how to magic away the damage done to her body. She'd passed easily. Now I was here. Now I was Anita Blake. Rookie cop and secret necromancer. 

It sounded like a goddamn pulp fiction novel. Instead, it was my life. 

Tragic. 

I slapped O'Toole's hand away from the coffee when he tried to lift it from my desk. He rocked back mockingly with a dramatic; 

"D'Oh!" 

"Fuck off, O'Toole," I grumbled, hunching over my paperwork. "That coffee is the only thing standing between you and a left hook." 

Detective Zerbrowski finally dragged his eyes away from his own paperwork at the sound of our tiff. He was about 5'7 and shorter than almost anyone in the department but for myself and Sergeant Karrin Murphy, the valiant leader of our sinking ship, steering us toward whatever job security she could while we desperately tried to scoop the water out of the boat before we all drowned. SI wasn't a place that spelled happy endings and successful careers. Apparently, O'Toole's predecessor on the force, Ron Carmichael, had been brutally murdered in the course of doing his job. 

It was really, really tempting to start all over. Find a different body with better prospects and live my life in quiet anonymity. But I'd never been a quitter. I was in this for the long haul, even if it killed me. 

After all, it's not like I'd stay dead.

"She's serious about the coffee, O'Toole,” Zebrowski said with a grin. "Someday I'll tell you about the Folgers incident." 

Fantastic. Maybe then _I'd_ learn about the Folgers Incident. I gathered it had something to do with the mayor and/or city council, but beyond that, I hadn't the foggiest. I only knew that it had been the straw that broke the camel's back and landed insubordinate Anita Blake and her partner Zerbrowski a place in Chicago's Special Investigations Unit two months ago. I could only glean the surface level thoughts Anita Blake had before she died if I didn't want to damage the mind I was currently occupying. Reliving an embarrassing incident was not a high priority for her at that moment. 

I returned to my paperwork, leaning in so my nose was almost pressing the paper. I fucking hated the graveyard shift. Every time I flexed my wrist, pain danced an energetic samba up the length of my arm and settled in the crook between my shoulder and neck. I'd taken to going to a massage therapist every Thursday, who could not understand who I constantly had knots at the base of my skull. She'd tactfully suggested a change in career or at least a pillow for back and neck support. 

It wouldn't help. The knots weren't caused by stress (though this job certainly had that in spades.) Rather, it was caused by the thin iron bands I wore on my right wrist. Specially crafted thorn manacles. Forged to look like medical bracelets. They'd cost more than the average policeman's salary. I'd had to access one of my mother's offshore accounts to get them, which was always a gut-clenching experience. She kept a close eye on where the money went, and she'd no doubt turned up in New York when I'd withdrawn funds. 

I could only hope she'd been unable to track me through the waypoint back to Chicago. I was so fucked if she turned up here and started raising hell. 

If I had to face down mother, this whole thing had been an exercise in futility. I'd need to disappear again. Find a new body and start all over. Maybe that was best. It was the textbook definition of insanity to be attempting the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Here's hoping the seventh time was the charm. 

I could probably best my mother if I tried. But magic would fly. The dead would rise. People would get hurt. That had been the whole point of obtaining the modified thorn manacles in the first place. So I didn't blow every damn piece of technology in sight. Sure they were hell to wear for the eight-hour (which often mutated into a ten-hour) shift, but it would all be worth it when things settled. 

I hoped. 

The manacles kept me from blowing every computer and cellphone in the office. I’d continue to hike up my big girl panties and learn to take it. Maybe ending up here was a sign from the big guy upstairs. Time to do my penance for my part in what had happened in Eastern Europe. 

Filling out paperwork for SI was giving me enough training to write a fiction novel. Though Zebrowski and I had only been in the department for a few months, we'd already been given a crash course in the supernatural. His learning curve was steeper than mine, but even I'd been surprised by some of the things lurking in Chicago's seedier areas. 

I was currently mulling over how to put a spin on the Shellicobb attacks we'd put a kibosh on. It wasn't like the brass would accept that we'd had to take a mini-arsenal of automatic weapons to exterminate a group of them in Undertown after they'd kidnapped several members of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority on their way back to the University of Chicago. 

My brainstorming session was interrupted when someone banged through the door of the office. I knew who it would be before I even dragged my eyes up from the page to confirm. 

Sergeant Karrin Murphy put off enough bristling energy that I could always seem to sense her coming even without my magic. She felt like the crackle of ozone before a thunderstorm. I wondered how most people missed that. It was probably the exterior. On the outside, Karrin looked like she might have been someone's favorite aunt or an aspiring soccer mom. Her golden hair was growing out of a bob and was long enough to put in a messy tail now. If she was an inch over 5'1 I would eat my pencil. Even I was a little taller. With wide blue eyes and cute upturned nose to complete the impression of general harmlessness, she'd look more at home coaching softball than commanding a task force. 

"We have another one," she announced grimly. "Which makes three." 

A prickle of unease needled the back of my already much-abused neck and the tension settled uncomfortably between my shoulder blades. I'd been lucky enough to stay away from murder scenes so far, mostly responding to threats in progress instead of the deaths after the fact. I didn't like the idea of examining the corpses. Not because I was bad with bodies. I didn't want to let on to anyone that I was really, really _good_ with them. We had another body, which meant the most recent case that had been shunted to our department had just become a serial. Fuck. 

"O'Toole, you take over here. Blake, Zebrowski, you're with me." 

No excuse I made would keep me in the office. Pissing off Karrin was not an option, at the moment. I really did need the job. So, biting back a long-suffering sigh, I emptied my coffee into the reusable to-go cup that Kincaid had also sent. Also with a donut decal, but thankfully not pink this time. I really was going to kick his ass for it someday. 

Then I seized the navy blazer off the back of my chair and slung it on over my shoulder rig and the Browning Hi-Power that I favored. Detective's badge on over that. Armed and caffeinated, just the way I liked things. Coffee in hand, I trooped after Zebrowski and Karrin through the precinct and out into the night. It was April, and a light mist clung to everything, the dewy moisture softening the edges of the Chicago night. 

"Brace yourselves, newbies," Karrin warned us as we climbed into the squad car. "This one is...it's going to be hard to look at."

_Joy._


	2. Chapter 2

Karrin was right on the money. Hard to look at was an understatement, because in every conversation she'd shared with us, she'd failed to mention the bodies stacking up in her serial case were _children_.

It never got easier to face the corpses of children, though I'd seen many in my time. I'd been born in the latter half of the 18th century before the Napoleonic Wars raged and King George the third was deemed unfit to rule. I'd been raised by my mother and father to see the starved and mistreated children on the street as potential fodder when they eventually expired. And though they'd tried to instill in me an obsession with--no a _worship_ of death, I'd never been able to stop the lurch of my heart or the twist in my guts when I witnessed suffering. My fatal flaw, the Achilles heel that she could always use to strike at me. 

Belle Morte, she'd called me. Beautiful death. Sweet and merciful death. Too gentle to be the daughter of Capiocorpus. The Corpsetaker's eternal disappointment. It really was a wonder she hadn't pulled a Lady Macbeth on me when I'd turned out to be such a miserable failure. 

And I knew I was stewing on all of these facts in a vain attempt to ignore the tangle of pale, bloodied limbs in the gutter. Forcing myself to swallow back anger and bitter bile I sidled closer, finally taking in the scene properly. 

I tried to pick out the least gruesome details first, sliding into a pristine white room in the back of my mind I'd constructed for times such as these. I'd never asked, but I assumed most everyone on the force had their own version. You couldn't deal with death in this in-your-face manner for long without being able to distance yourself from the humanity of the victims. Not if you possessed even a sliver of conscience. I sorted the details into sterile bullet points of information to be agonized over later. 

The kid had been wearing a hoodie and a pair of orange basketball shorts. He looked about seven or eight. Red hair and freckles. He looked like he'd been healthy and well-cared for. I wasn't sure whether I could tally that in a positive or negative ledger. He'd been safe and loved, not a kid plucked from the street. The bike that lay crumpled not far from his body spoke to a loving family. He'd been a happy, normal kid. Good for him, bad for his parents. Because it meant someone was dreading that inevitable knock on the door. Someone would break under the knowledge that their kid was gone. 

I prayed I wouldn't be there to see that realization break over their faces. 

The front of the gray hoodie was caked with dried blood. I had to round the body, being careful not to slip in the muck that gathered around the nearby storm drain. The booties I'd slipped on over my Nikes weren't especially good for traction.

I was practically on top of him before I got a good look at the wound. His throat had been torn open. Not slit. Just scooped out, like pumpkin guts at Halloween. It was surprisingly clean, for a wound so savage. The larynx, trachea, and esophagus all gone. It left white spine showing near the back and a few stray tendons standing out, but for the most part, everything vital was gone. 

"Jesus," Zerbrowski muttered, coming to lean over me so he could get a better look. 

I tensed. Zerbrowski hadn't given me a reason to distrust him and, for whatever reason, he did seem to like me. But I'd lived a lifetime with treachery, and old habits die hard. It wasn't personal. I didn't want anyone at my back. I edged away from him, crab-walking to the kid's other side so that he could slide into the vacant space. 

There was no humor on his face now. Zerbrowski cheerfully adopted the role of buffoon when we entered SI, but it was a front. Underneath the veneer of a lecherous, devil-may-care detective lay a shrewd thinker. He was a good man and a good cop. I was lucky to have him as a partner. But even he couldn't produce a quip in light of what we were seeing. 

"Yeah," Murphy said with a heavy sigh. "And this one is fairly clean, comparatively. More..." 

She choked for just a second, steeled herself and then continued. 

"More...parts...were missing on the other victims." 

I didn't ask which parts and she didn't supply an answer. I'd have to read the reports at some point if Zerbrowski and I were on the case. If I were lucky I'd be able to save myself the nightmares for another day or so.

The body looked different after death. Everyone over a certain age knew that logically. If you'd been to a funeral at any point in your life, you could sense the sucking void of being that imbued a corpse. They were merely shells, discarded now that there was no guiding consciousness to pull them forward. Even with embalming to put a fine coat of paint on all the unpleasantness, it was hard to deny that death transformed. After rigor released its hold, every muscle went lax for the first time since conception. 

Before preservatives and pretty, lacquered boxes became available to all, the truth of that was even more evident. I was reminded of that again, looking down at the waxy skin and flat, sightless eyes of this little boy. He'd been dead at least three days but no more than five. The blood had already pooled in his body, resulting in dark lividity marks on what I could see of the backs of his legs. There'd be more on the rest of him. Thankfully, the hoodie and baggy shorts were hiding the worst of the bloat. 

I examined the mouth and nose for streaks of blood and foam. At this stage of decomposition, there should have been some evidence of it. Nothing. That was...odd. 

My mind spun slowly like a lazy Susan. This was definitely pertinent, but I wasn't sure how or why yet. And even if I worked that part out, how was I supposed to explain it in a way the other cops would understand? Anita Blake was a cop, not a forensics expert. I'd probably have to wait another day or two to put in my two cents. Just as well. I was fucking exhausted. I needed sleep, I needed food, and I needed the damn thorn manacles off so I could think clearly. 

"Blake." 

The sound of my name drew my focus away from the corpse and up toward the end of the block, where Karrin was deep in conversation with a new arrival. He was lounging against a vehicle that was more patchwork quilt than VW Bug. I thought it might have been blue, once upon a time, but with the many grafted on parts (some of which hadn't even been painted yet) it was really hard to tell. 

It was Zerbrowski who'd spoken. He jerked a thumb in Murphy's direction. 

"C'mon. Murph wants us to meet the consultant." 

Ah yes, the "psychic" that Karrin sometimes brought in. O'Toole and Zerbrowski were of the opinion it was all horseshit. Sharp-tongued and skeptical I just knew that my partner was going to have a zinger ready the second that the guy started spouting mumbo-jumbo. I was a little less cynical. Psychics did exist, but they were often low-level practitioners capable of object or aura readings. Once in a very great while you'd get someone with a wisp of potential for ectomancy, who actually _could_ speak to your dearly departed gran. 

Usually, they were charlatans, pestering police with theories until something stuck to bolster their credibility. Sometimes you'd get a con artist with fantastic cold reading ability and no power whatsoever. That's what I was leaning towards as I trailed in Zerbrowski's wake. That was until we got about fifteen feet away. At that point, my stomach bottomed out and I found it suddenly hard to swallow. 

Because the tall, lanky beanpole of a man was no fraud. The quarterstaff he clutched in one hand was no prop, the focus dangling from his wrist no folksy charm to ward off evil. He was a sorcerer. Perhaps more. Goddamnit. Why the fuck couldn't things ever be simple? 

We came to a stop just shy of the Bug. The man's head tilted toward us just a fraction, assessing us without ever truly meeting our eyes. Dark hair, dark eyes. A bit of a hawkish nose, strong jaw lined with stubble. It was an impressive profile. It was a shame I was too busy shitting a brick to appreciate it. 

"So this is the psychic?" Zerbrowski drawled, taking up a position slightly in front of me. 

I didn't go for that sort of macho posturing. I was a big girl, damn it. I could take care of myself and I didn't need Zerbrowski of all people trying to protect me. So, counterintuitive as it was, I pushed in front of Zerbrowski and took point, crossing my arms beneath my generous bust line, drawing upon every scrap of height I had.

"Not quite," the man said in a slightly rough baritone. 

He sounded like he'd been woken recently. He pushed up from the hood of the car and unfolded himself to his full height. Christ, he had to be almost seven feet tall. I felt like a gnome. He extended a hand toward me. 

"Harry Dresden, wizard," he said, offering me a small smile. 

A wizard. Fuck me. 

"Anita Blake, smartass," I shot back, taking his hand. Power crackled across my palm when I took his hand. "Nice to meet you."


	3. Chapter 3

Harry let out a snort of amusement and his lips twisted up a little. He had a nice smile. Tentative and a little sweet. Nothing like the wicked smirks and half-lidded bedroom eyes I'd grown used to from my last lover. 

Thoughts of him successfully douse any thoughts I might have been having about the wizard's lips. It didn't matter how many years passed, I still remembered that first time. Still remembered _him_. Remembered why I'd remained almost completely celibate for the last seventy-five years. 

I dragged my gaze from the wizard's face with some difficulty and flicked a look back at the crime scene. 

"Here to wow us with your magical insight, Mr. Dresden?" I drawled, injecting as much scorn as I could into the question. 

He shrugged the mockery off easily, straightening even further, somehow finding an extra inch or two on his person to add to the already impressive height. I was going to develop little dog syndrome if I had to work with him for any length of time. I'd been in many bodies. Tall, short, thin, curvy, black and white. Form didn't usually matter to me, but standing next to the veritable giant of a man was uncomfortable. I was intensely aware of the physical threat he could pose, even without his magic to back all that height and lean muscle. 

There was some truth to that adage, a good big man beat a good little man every time. He had superior reach, superior muscle tone, and magic at the ready. I could beat him if pushed but, again, going toe to toe with a wizard of the White Council defeated the whole purpose of the exercise. 

Harry's smile grew just a touch cynical, but the mockery didn't otherwise seem to bother him. 

"Sure. Give me a moment to limber up the old cartilage, Detective. That cute little nose twitch we do isn't as easy as it looks."

I barked out a laugh, surprised at the flippant reply. In my experience, wizards were always the laconic types, whose commitment to the craft was only rivaled by their dedication to the art of brooding. I just couldn't picture my father or mother sitting down to do anything as benign as watching Bewitched. 

"Enough chit-chat," Murphy cut in, stepping between Harry and I. "I want you to give me what you can, Dresden. The sooner you can make inquiries of your...contacts, the better." 

I took note of the way she stumbled over the word "contacts." That was worth filing away for further investigation. Just how in-the-know was Sergeant Murphy?

Dresden nodded. "Can't guarantee how sharp I'll be, Murph. You are dragging me out of bed at the ass-end of morning. Dawn is in what, two hours?" 

"Two and a half. Quit your whining, wizard-boy. Less talking, more casting." 

I hid another smile. I was beginning to like Karrin Murphy quite a bit. A tiny, furious blonde angel making the world a safer place one well-placed bullet at a time. Bringing in someone in the know was smart. Way, way smarter than I'd come to expect from most mortals, in fact. The few I'd tried to reveal things to over the centuries took it badly. Very, very badly. Reason number two on the long list of why I didn't date. 

I couldn't fault her for bringing in the wizard, even if it made my life that much harder. 

Harry accepted the prodding good-naturedly, though he seemed the sort to dig his heels in and be contrary if the mood struck him. But anyone, even the most myopic of wizards, could see that this was not the time to test Karrin. She looked haggard. New lines were beginning to etch themselves around her eyes, permanent reminders of all the times she'd had to flinch away from the horror of this job. Dark, bruise-like circles were beginning to form under them as well. She looked like she needed the coffee I'd left in the cruiser. 

"Lead the way, Murph."

I trailed behind the pair of them, keeping my distance this time. Police machismo only went so far in my book. Survival mattered more than appearing to be a stolid and courageous officer of the law. Maybe I'd have thought differently a century or more ago, when I'd been chomping at the bit to prove myself, willing to climb over anyone to receive even a scrap of parental approval. 

But I'd grown up since then. Hard to give a damn about that now, after what mother had done to me. 

Dresden accepted the booties that Zerbrowski extended with a nod of thanks and slipped them on over his shoes. Another curiosity. I'd found in my tenure that most wizards refused to yank their overlarge noses out of their books long enough to acknowledge things like new technology and advances. Granted, most of them had a good excuse when magic stopped souring milk and started fouling technology instead.

Dresden sank to his knees in front of the corpse. He looked vaguely sick, the lines around his eyes tightening. I thought better of him for the reaction. Good to see some of the council had some fucking humanity left in them. Where had this sort of wizard been when I'd been hunted by the Council's obedient lapdogs all those years ago? 

Harry Dresden was a riddle wrapped in an enigma and packaged in a scruffy but strangely attractive package. It really was a shame I'd never get the chance to unravel that mystery. 

_Keep your fucking distance, Blake,_ I reminded myself sternly. _You cannot afford this. Can't afford him. And he definitely can't afford you._

"Murph," Dresden said after a moment. "Got any tweezers on you? Maybe in one of those cute little nail file packets girls like so much?" 

Karrin's eyes rolled skyward, face screwing up in consternation. She looked like she was praying to the Almighty for the restraint not to smack Dresden upside the head. 

"Charmingly sexist of you Dresden. I don't file my nails. Hell, I don't think that I even own a purse."

"I've got some," I said, shoving a hand into the pocket of my charcoal slacks and produced one of the aforementioned "cute file packets" tossing it lightly to Dresden. I didn't mention that I only kept it on hand to pick grit out of the punctures the thorn manacles left in my wrists at the end of every shift. 

He spun deftly, rose half-out of his crouched position and caught it, flashing me another grin, this time with teeth. My traitorous libido kicked up a notch. I really needed to take Ronnie's advice and get myself a toy or something. If I weren't going to be jumping a man anytime soon (for their safety and my own) I needed to do something to deal with the problem myself. Distractions like this were going to make it impossible to do my job. 

"Thanks, Blake," he said. 

"Keep them. I won't want them back after you're through, most likely." 

Dresden didn't answer, instead opting to fish the tweezers out of the thin pink plastic sleeve. Wielding them with care, he plucked something from the front of the kid's sweatshirt and held it up to the light. If I squinted, I could just make out a strand of hair. About twelve to fourteen inches in length, which would mean the bearer had hair that reached their shoulders or mid-back. It looked like it might have belonged to a woman going gray. Most of the color in the strand was gone, but it might have once been black or a very dark brown. 

I was a little stunned he'd been able to make out the tiny detail against the drab color of the sweatshirt, especially since the rest of us had been staring at the corpse and hadn't noticed a goddamn thing. Was I really that tired? Or was I slipping in my old age?

"Congratu-fucking-lations," Zerbrowski muttered. "You found a hair. Might be useful in a few weeks when we can get a report back from forensics. Got anything else useful to offer, psychic? Cause this tells us nothing." 

"It tells us a lot, actually," I said, grudgingly coming to the wizard's defense. "The attacker was probably older and female. And even if it was a man, the length is a distinguishing feature. We'll be able to find a man with a silver mullet. Kind of stands out." 

"You're assuming, Anita," Zerbrowski said, turning his frown on me. "The kid could have a grandmother." 

"And you think that it would have stayed on him after the attack? I can already tell you he tried to fight. See the blood and skin caked beneath the nails? I think the kid managed to yank that off his attacker's head while he died." 

Zerbrowski crossed his arms over his chest and replied with something caustic, but I didn't really hear him. Because, out of the corner of one eye, I spotted a flickering gray shape floating beneath a distant overpass. I turned on one heel to look. I couldn't help it. It was like my name being called by a familiar voice. Turning to face the spirit was second nature, as ingrained as checking both sides of a street before crossing. 

She was a little thing. Probably only eight or nine when she'd died. She would barely come up to my elbow, even in this diminutive body, if she were near enough to measure. It was difficult to tell, with the grayscale that came with spirit form, exactly what color her hair might have been in life, but I thought it had probably been a pale white-blonde, her eyes some shade of blue. Both seemed translucent in this form. 

She huddled behind one of the concrete supporting columns as though it could somehow protect her. Maybe she sensed the wizard. maybe not. But I could tell that she at least sensed me. Damn it, this was exactly what the thorn manacles were meant to prevent. How the hell was I still throwing off energy that the spooks could trail? 

The little girl met my eyes and her lip wobbled dangerously. I still heard her, even with the vast distance between us. 

"I told him not to follow them," she whispered. "I told him. But he didn't listen." 

My blood chilled. Them. We were dealing with more than one killer, then. Fuck. 

I opened my mouth, a dozen questions jostling to the tip of my tongue before I realized I couldn't voice a single one of them. Not in front of the others and especially not in front of the wizard. 

And it was a moot point, anyway. No sooner than she'd made her whispered confession, the girl was gone, whipped away like a vapor on the wind. I just stood staring at the vacant space where she'd been for a too-long second, stewing in my own rapidly mounting anxiety. 

An argument drew my focus back to the body and the group of bickering detectives arranged around it. With effort, I managed to stuff my nerves down to a point where I could listen and make sense of what was being said. 

"Sergeant, you can't be serious-" Zerbrowski began, color rising high into his cheeks with every indignant word. 

It was a strange look for him. He was usually so laid back, bordering on being slovenly at times. He reminded me a little of Pigpen, always disheveled and messy, no matter how hard he tried to manage it. 

"I meant what I said, Detective. Take it up with Internal Affairs if you have a problem with it, but this method has been dependable. I trust Dresden." 

"You're just going to let this charlatan waltz out of our crime scene with evidence?"

Zerbrowski turned the furious glare on Dresden, who'd curled the hair into a plastic evidence baggie and was in the midst of pocketing it. Karrin ignored Zerbrowski's continued spluttering and gave the wizard an expectant look. 

"Will it be enough?" 

He nodded. "Blood would be better, but it's a start. So long as they haven't shaved their head since, it'll give me a direction."

Use the one scrap of evidence that could lead to an ID on the perp in a tracking spell, rather than trap it for weeks or even months in an evidence locker until some clerk could run a DNA test and only maybe find a culprit. Quick and smart. God, but I hated that Karrin was so savvy. She definitely knew more than she was letting on, which was only going to end up fucking me sideways. 

There was only one way I was going to be able to keep this new life from going tits up before it even got going. I was going to have to nip this case in the bud. Finish it and find a way to write it off as out of our jurisdiction, and all without letting on what I'd done.

My first stop when I clocked off? The morgue. I needed a crack at the other bodies to see what their minds could tell me.

I scrubbed my face with my hands. God, I was going to get no sleep tonight, was I? 

This was the reason I fucking hated the graveyard shift.


	4. Chapter 4

As a connoisseur, I could safely say that Chicago had one of the nicest morgues that I'd ever seen. 

Now granted, I may have been biased. The last time I had cause to visit one I'd been body shopping nearly sixty years ago and had tried to limit my interactions with the dead ever since. Medicine had certainly advanced since then. 

The body of the little boy, Camden Mason, had been shipped to the Cook County Morgue shortly after Dresden and Murphy left the scene. Though it hadn't earned me any favors with Murphy, I'd claimed illness and left to go home before my shift was meant to end, leaving Zerbrowski to handle whatever fresh hell might crop up in my wake. The look he'd leveled me over the rims of his wire-rimmed glasses silently demanded an explanation at a later date. 

I still wasn't sure what I was going to tell him.

I parked my jeep a few blocks away from Chicago's Forensic Institute and walked the remaining stretch, carefully easing the thorn manacles off of my wrist as I approached. I'd have to flex at least a few minor necromantic muscles to solve this case and needed to allow the magic to flow naturally for a few minutes before I attempted it. It'd been close to a century since I'd called upon my power for more than just a simple body transfer. Something like elation was battling against the press of anxiety that had been bearing down on me all evening. 

It was a fucking stupid reaction, with a wizard of the White Council roaming Chicago's streets, but no one ever said that addiction was a logical process. The craving was always there. I shouldn't do this. It would be so easy to backslide. 

But I was going to do it, idiotic or not, because there were lives on the line. 

Children's lives.

The streetlamps and exterior lights around the Institute began to flicker seconds after I slid the thorn manacles off, excess magical energy bleeding off of me like heat the moment it could. I folded them carefully and stuffed them into the pocket of my suit jacket, wincing when one of the bulbs in the nearest streetlight burst, sending a shower of sparks down onto the pavement. They sizzled and died upon contact with the damp ground. 

Damn. I needed to perform more magic if my mere unfettered presence was going to start doing things like that. 

A pair of lock picks and a quick hex took care of the backdoor, which deposited me into a dimly lit hallway very near the examination rooms. I paused, frowning as a loud ompah-ompah, punctuated with the strains of accordion music and the clash of cymbals. 

Someone was listening to...polka?

I stood for a moment, cloaked in the darkness of the corridor, listening to the upbeat music swirl through the mostly empty corridors, cheering no one but the mysterious listener. It wouldn't matter much to the dead, and a good thing too. Imagine dying horribly to be treated to a post mortem rendition of The Best of Polka. It'd be enough to bring anyone back as a vengeful shade. 

Setting aside my bemusement at last, I crept forward, twining a one of the hairs I'd plucked surreptitiously from Camden's head around my finger. Not truly necessary, if I was determined to find him. I could call him specifically, raise his corpse and direct it down the hall toward me. But subtle it was not, and if the mortician on duty was currently working on his body, I'd end up giving he or she nightmares for years to come. 

The hair tingled against my palm, dead cells calling to the greater whole, leading me like a homing beacon to the exam room that I needed. It was the first thankfully, not the last in the hall, which continued to produce loud oomphs and ahs in oblivious glee. Another few minutes with the lock picking set, and I was in. 

Camden was in the middle row, stuffed into a body bag in a refrigeration unit for safekeeping until someone could determine cause of death.

"Well consider the M.E. in," I muttered. "Let's see who killed you Camden."

The drag of the body bag's zipper sounded too loud in the silence. I hesitated only a few seconds before parting the heavy black fabric to get a good look at his face. 

He was even ashier than before. Corpses never got prettier after death, even the ones still shambling about, walking and talking and soulless. I stared down into all the frozen, deteriorating youth and felt a twinge of guilt. Hadn't this poor kid suffered enough, without me peeking in on those final moments like a sick voyeur?

Maybe. But he was gone now, far beyond my, or anyone else's, ability to save. He could help me save more kids just like him. So I pushed back against my squeamishness and leaned over his prone body, pressing one hand over his forehead and drumming the fingers of the other hand lightly on the metal slab he lay on, willing the third eye to open at the same time I opened my sight and reached for my power.

The tide rose in me, cold and sweet, like sucking in a lungful of peppermint. It slid across my tongue like candy, rich and lovely, even as the cold seared through the mortal skin and sinew like frostbite.

I locked gazes with the dead boy, and the probe began. I sank into Camden's last memory and had to clamp my teeth down over a scream of agony as his pain rippled through me. 

Cold and hot. 

The air in the tunnel was cold and raised goosebumps all over my skin. Wetness dripped down from the end of a tapered stalactite, stinging my eyes. It barely registered, dwarfed by the hot stabs of agony as nails ripped at my wrists, my throat. Screams echoed back to me from the walls, and I only distantly realized they were mine. 

I could't get them off of me. Bony hands, too thin and frail to look dangerous, held me down even as another tore at me. The light was out and I couldn't see them, and it made it worse. I didn't like the dark. I didn't want to die alone here. 

"Mommy!" I wailed, the sound scraping my throat. We hadn't gone far, had we? She had to hear me! "Mommy, Mommy! Please!"

A laugh whispered through the darkness, somehow carrying over my screams, the pounding of my heart, and the animalistic growl coming from my right. 

"Kill the mewling brat," a male voice snapped. "Stop playing with it, Pip." 

"No! Stop! Please-"

Dagger-like points sank into my throat, another hot slash of agony. Immense pressure choked off the remainder of my cry and then, with a horrific slurping sound, the thing tore everything away. 

Panic battered around the inside of my skull. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe! 

A small tut drew my attention upward, to the little girl from earlier. She regarded me with a scowl, little hands balled into fists. _Nikki,_ I tried to say. _Nikki, please help me!_

"I _told_ you," she said with a huff. Then she turned on a heel and vanished into the dark as well, leaving me alone. My chest felt too tight. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't breathe!

Black spots were spreading rapidly across my eyes and the last thing I heard before slumping limply to the floor was the slurping of hungry mouths in the dark.

I came back to myself in the examination room of the Forensic Institute with a gasp, tears stinging the corners of my eyes, the sense of asphyxiation still present. It took several deep breaths to convince myself that my throat was entirely intact and I could, in fact, breathe.

Not enough. Even after reliving that final, wretched memory, I still didn't have a clue what I was dealing with, except to know that they were inhumanly strong and possessed ripping claws and teeth. It didn't narrow anything down. 

Damn it, I was going to have to go back in again. Deeper this time, to the day before the attack. I had to know what led up to this. 

The rattle of a key ring froze me to the spot. Someone was outside the door. 

I zipped Camden's bag and slid his slab back in as quickly and quietly as possible, draping an inexpert veil over myself just as the door swung open and the overhead light flickered on. A man stepped inside, humming the continuation of a polka ballad softly. If I'd been more aware of my surroundings, I'd probably have realized that the music had stopped. 

The newcomer was about my height, which made him one of the shortest men I'd ever seen. I was willing to bet he weighed almost as much as me as too, in the ballpark of around a hundred and twenty pounds. He wore blue scrubs, with the pants tucked into hiking boots. His hair was wiry and stuck up in all directions. And he was heading straight for the wall of refrigeration units, on a collision course with me. 

Son of a bitch. Veils were one of my weakest areas, and this one wouldn't hold up under scrutiny if I had to move far or fast. I had to do something. 

With another sharp twinge of guilt, I reached for my magic and sent a hex toward the overhead lights. They burst into a fresh shower of sparks. The little man let out a small yip of fright and I used the sound to cover my departure, skating past him and out the door within seconds. I didn't stop until I was hunched over the hood of my jeep, breathing hard. 

That had been too close, and I still hadn't gotten what I'd come for. I thrust a fist into the frame of the jeep in frustration. Damn it, why wouldn't things go right for me, just once? 

Black, oily thoughts slid into my mind.

_You could go back and kill him,_ they whispered. One life for many. _It's a fair trade._

With a wordless sound of disgust, I reached into my suit pocket and retrieved the thorn manacles. And this was the reason I didn't lean on my powers more than once or twice a decade. I'd managed to somehow claw my way from the cesspool of insanity that was regular black magic use. I wasn't going back. Not now, not ever. 

I'd never be like _them_ ever again.

I turned the heat on full blast and blared the Bee Gees all the way home as soon as the magic settled enough for the CD player to work. It took the entire drive to my apartment complex in Lincoln Park for the cold to abate and, even then, the taste of peppermint lingered on my tongue. Delicious. Tempting. 

Wrong. 

The sky was a sullen lead gray when I entered the lobby, once again under a veil. No one spotted me. The guard on duty had fallen asleep halfway through a Sudoku puzzle. On reflex, I crossed to the wall of mailboxes, selecting the key from the wad of others on the ring before slotting it into the lock and twisting. The little door popped open. 

A stack of bills awaited me, along with an unsolicited magazine, an offer for life insurance which made me snicker lightly, and small envelope with neat penmanship on the front. I turned it over in my palm curiously to read the front and found no stamp or return address just the words; 

_Ma Petite._

My breath left in a shuddering exhale and didn't return. I fumbled to get the heavy card stock out of the envelope. Dread beat a tattoo behind my ribs as my heart seemed to hammer in time with the exclamation in my head. 

No! No! No! No!

There were only two words on the thick square of paper and they brought stinging tears to my eyes as my worst fears were confirmed. 

_Found you._

"Jean-Claude," I whispered.


	5. Chapter 5

My hands formed rigid claws around the piece of cardstock, but I couldn't let it go, even as I crumpled the cryptic message into a wad in my palm. 

There'd been no stamp, no return address. Which meant he'd been here. Might _still_ be here. 

I cast a panicked glance around the lobby, every shadow and alcove now suspect. He could be crouched behind the security desk, in the shadowy recess that housed the public bathrooms, or pressed against the fat, sturdy pillar in the middle of the room. Was he behind it, waiting for me to stride past like some ignorant lemming? Even the hunched guard rang false now. His half-drunk cup of coffee was almost certainly dosed with a tranquilizer to make this little bit of theater possible.

Smug bastard had always loved his theatrics. I couldn't imagine he'd gone far. 

My heart began to beat double-time, fear screaming orders at my hindbrian to run. Run _now._ I would _not_ go back. I'd die a final time before I'd allow that. 

But my feet were rooted to the spot, mind unhelpfully spinning a dozen contradictory responses to the current situation. I could run out the door and never look back. Abandon this body and shove into the first freshly dead or dying body I could find, regardless of sex and abandon it when I was clear of Chicago. But I'd taken that route to escape him before. He might be lying in wait in expectation of a panicked flight from the building. I should pretend not to have seen it and take the stairs up to my apartment, lock myself in, and call Kincaid for backup. 

I wasn't sure how long it would take for the vaunted Hellhound to show up, but with the foci I possessed and the mini-arsenal I'd purchased from him over the years? I thought I could at least hold Jean-Claude off long enough for Kincaid to arrive. 

I just had to move. Put one foot in front of the other and climb up the damn stairs, lock the door, and find a place I could make a stand that'd face the side of the building that looked out over the barren concrete stretch to the back of the building. If I started firing in any other direction, people were going to get hurt. 

Killing them wasn't worth making a clean getaway. At least, that was what I kept trying to tell myself. There was a part of me, an ugly, buried part that didn't care how many bodies I had to pile to make a barricade between him and me. I wouldn't let him touch me.

Never again. 

A horrible wheezing rasp was beginning in my throat as I tried in vain to suck air into my frozen lungs. They didn't want to cooperate. My chest felt cold and tight and my head was beginning to swim. I was going to pass out soon if I didn't breathe and then he'd have me for sure. 

That thought was enough to allow me to draw in one gasping inhale and turn my feet toward the staircase. I kept my face down, hidden from any cameras. No doubt he'd be watching through the feed. He must have been fucking delighted to learn they were still intact, and was savvy enough to realize what that meant. No magic. Easy prey. The hunt was on again. A continuation to the cat and mouse game he'd been playing with me since I was fourteen years old. 

Every footfall across the lobby and up the stairs sounded like a slap in the silence, even though I tread as carefully as I could. My own hypersensitivity? Maybe. But if he was here, he'd hear it too. Ears like fucking wolves, all of them. I was amazed I could hear anything at all past the furious rushing of blood in my ears and the constant, shrieking refrain of:

_"He's here. He's in Chicago. Get out, get out, get out..."_

I rested my hand lightly on the butt of my gun, flicking the strap off the holster in case I had to draw quickly. This wasn't like last time. I wasn't a scared little girl faced with the big, bad monsters for the first time. I'd faced more powerful than Jean-Claude since. I had survived an ordeal that should have shredded my soul to pieces and scattered it like dust into the atmosphere. I could do this. 

Tell that to the lump the size of Texas in my throat. 

My fingers and toes were beginning to go numb, my breath still wheezing quietly as I tried to force adequate amounts of air into my lungs. It felt like I was trying to chew and swallow my tongue. Some traumas stick with you. Big, festering abscesses in essential parts of your mind. You don't poke at them, lest they pop and let all manner of toxic shit come flooding right back to you. 

Jean-Claude was one of the many throbbing pustules I didn't touch. The first and probably the worst for that very reason.

My apartment was a one bedroom suite on the fifth floor, situated near the end of the hall near the stairs, which were currently dark, the light having burned out sometime last night due to my close proximity. I was murder on nearby technology, even though I tried not to actively sling magic.

I liked that I was so near the stairs. Easy escape if I absolutely had to run. It also meant I had two directions in which I could shoot. Out toward the big, open concrete parking area or to the side with the stairwell. I only had one neighbor on this side of the hall, a young, attractive bachelor who'd asked me to coffee a few times in the past. I'd always turned him down. 

Good thing too. Jean-Claude would kill any new lovers in a heartbeat. In his mind I belonged to him and him alone. 

I came to the landing on my floor and opened the stairwell door cautiously, hand still on my gun. I didn't like the thought of a shooting match here with three sides of the apartment that could lead to innocents caught in the crossfire. So, with difficulty, I removed my hand from the butt of the gun and instead eased the spikes of the thorn manacles from my wrist just enough to allow for a trickle of magic. They were still poised over my skin, ready to sink in like tiny, needle-point teeth in case I was making a molehill into fucking Kilimanjaro.

But as I rounded the corner I saw, with a nauseating, stomach-swooping surge of terror that my apartment door was slightly ajar. 

Someone was inside, waiting for me. 

_Run. Get the fuck out, you stupid bitch!_ my brain screamed at me as I continued to creep toward the open door. _Do you want to die like some bimbo in a horror movie?_

I ignored the sneering voice. I'd never really understood the woman who walked into the shadows where monsters lurked, even after multiple signs she was safer to run the other direction. Now I could grasp that compulsion better. Sometimes you couldn't help yourself. Sometimes you were just magnetically drawn to that frightening thing in the corner, had to know if it was really as bad as it was made out to be. 

The door swung open and I stepped into the interior of the apartment. The living room beyond was painted a pale beige. A rug of the same color dominated most of the hardwood floor not occupied by the chocolate brown couches and end table full of not-technically-allowed candles that were burned down to almost nothing. A flatscreen hung on one wall, but was rarely used. I didn't like wearing the manacles in the house if I could help it and thus almost none of my appliances worked. The stove had been the latest casualty, and an actual necessity since I did like to eat occasionally. 

A shape darted out at me from the darkness, arms extended and I acted on instinct, thrusting out my hand, summoning all the magic I could on short notice and with the manacles still touching my skin. I lobbed the shapeless mass at my attacker, taking him off him off his feet, slamming him bodily into the end table, which caved beneath his weight. Candles toppled and rolled in every direction. 

And that was all my frayed nerves could take. I turned on my heel and sprinted back the way I'd come, thrusting the spikes painfully into my wrist again. Blood oozed down my fingers, dripping onto the carpet of the hall. Not good. Couldn't leave blood lying around for a wizard to use against me. But on the other hand, it was nothing I could help. I'd taken the damn manacles off multiple times today and I didn't have time to scrub the stain out. 

I pelted down the stairwell as fast as my legs would take me, cursing Anita Blake's below-average stride. I missed my last body, elderly as it had been. At least Mrs. Pringle had been taller than this. 

Anita had been in shape, though, which allowed me to gain a momentary advantage over my pursuer. It wouldn't last long but if I could get out to the parking lot and draw on him...

He entered the stairwell seconds later, a shadow that loomed like a proverbial giant above me. I had to bite back a shriek as he began to quickly close the distance. I started taking the stairs two or three at a time in a vain attempt to beat him to the ground floor. I almost made it too, landing on the ground floor landing with a thump. 

But almost doesn't count except for horseshoes and hand grenades.

He caught me at last and his momentum slammed us both into the stairwell door. I barely registered the pain and swung out wildly, determined to give the White Court bastard a taste of pain before he obliterated my mind. Again. 

The punch landed and something cracked. The hands on me fell away and a deep, semi-familiar voice half-shouted; 

"Fuck! Ow! Anita, what the hell was that for?"

Breath gusted out of me like a deflating balloon and the cold fear and fury drained away, leaving a staggering sense of relief in their place. Relief and guilt, because I realized belatedly I'd massively overreacted. 

I fished my key chain out of my back pocket and pressed down on the little LED flashlight attachment Zerbrowski had bought me. A narrow, wavering beam illuminated a handsome face, but not the one I'd been expecting. 

Tall and well-built, with what appeared to be a year-round golden tan that required little to no sunlight to maintain. Long-shoulder length honey-brown hair pulled back away from his face. He stared at me, dark eyes fixed wide in a look of indignant surprise. His nose was a little less straight now, and blood streamed over his full lips. 

"Oh God," I breathed. "Richard, I'm so sorry." 

My neighbor stared at me reproachfully. "Remind me never to spook you again, Anita. You pack one hell of a punch." 

Now that the shock and fear were wearing off, a hot sizzle of anger was rising to take its place. My hands balled into fists at my side. 

"What the hell were you doing in my apartment, Richard?" 

"Fixing your stove, like you asked me to, remember? You gave me a copy of your key last week, for God's sake. I told you I'd get to it when I could get the part." 

Oh. I distantly remembered that, now that he mentioned it. He'd been there to help me and I'd assaulted him. 

Damn it, there wasn't a way I didn't come off as the asshole here. 

"Sorry," I grumbled. "I just..." 

Words failed me. How did one tactfully explain the return of a mind-bending, a centuries-old, insanely jealous ex-lover to a casual acquaintance? 

By telling lies over coffee, that's how. 

"I'm sorry," I repeated. "I think I owe you an explanation. How about that coffee date? Or maybe just breakfast at the diner a few blocks up? It's about time for it. I'll go up and get my first aid kit before I lock the apartment. You're going to want to set that before it sticks."

Richard examined my expression for a moment and then nodded. His lips twitched finally, threatening to curl into an amused smile. 

"The coffee better be good, Blake."

"To die for," I promised. 

After all, I'd know. 

That ghost of a possibility blossomed into the real thing as Richard smiled.

"It's a date."


	6. Chapter 6

Sunlight trickled through the slatted blinds that covered the windows of Stephen's Diner and traced the side of my face like a warm caress. It should have felt nice.

It didn't. 

"I hate seeing the sunrise," I grumbled, lifting my mug to my lips before taking a sullen swallow. 

Richard chuckled. "Not a morning person, I take it?" 

Blue-black bruises were already beginning to form, like I'd blacked both of his eyes instead of broken his nose. The long, straight line of it was tenuously repaired with tape. He winced every time he took a sip of coffee but still, he was smiling. I couldn't wrap my head around why he was so damn thrilled to be on a date with me. I'd committed battery, for God's sake. 

"If I'm watching the sunrise, it means I'm on graveyard shift again. Blech." 

I grimaced into my coffee cup once more, contemplating the dark, sloshing liquid sourly. Again, it only made Richard laugh. 

"I wondered why you weren't home when I came to fix the stove. I guess this constitutes a late night for you, huh?" 

The small talk was grating on my nerves. He was so infuriatingly casual about this whole thing. Like it was no big deal I'd hurled him across the room and then snapped his nose to the side with a right hook. I didn't want to pretend that this was anything more than it was. Damage control. 

At the same time, I wasn't eager to broach the topic of my mad dash down the stairs and ensuing assault either. I chewed the inside of my cheek furiously, wrestling with the competing desires. 

Ultimately, I was saved from having to choose. Richard polished off the bran muffin he'd ordered and the last of his coffee and finally came out and asked the question we were both dancing around. 

"What happened back there, Anita?"

I kneaded my temples and decided to settle on a half-truth. "It's been a rough week, Richard. The serial case SI is tackling..." 

A genuine shudder of fear rattled up my spine. It seemed impossible that only two hours ago I'd been sifting through the last moments of a little boy's life searching for clues. It seemed like an entire eon had passed since reading Jean-Claude's message and our arrival at this cozy hole-in-the-wall diner. I still had no explanation handy for Zerbrowski when he questioned me about my sudden departure.

Richard canted his head to the right, considering me. He'd let his hair down and the action let the honey-brown waves tumble artfully around his shoulders. That little movement successfully cooled the faint stirrings of desire I'd felt for him. He was different in almost every respect from Jean-Claude, but the hair? Jean-Claude fucking lived for the look of casual disarray. 

"Maybe that's part of it," he conceded. "But it's not the only reason you freaked, am I right?" 

"I don't know what you mean," I said, shoving a spoon unenthusiastically into my bowl of cinnamon apple oatmeal. I stirred the lumpy mass in my bowl rather than look at him. 

Deflection, thy name is Anita Blake. 

"You came through the door like you expected to face the wolfman or something. I didn't know an itty-bitty thing like you could throw a man that far." 

"Five three is not that short," I huffed. "The national average for women is five foot four."

"My point still stands. The response was disproportionate." 

I had the uncharacteristically childish urge to fling a spoonful of my oatmeal at him. Silly, as he'd done nothing but try to make me jump a little when I came into my apartment. But I so didn't need this at the moment. Not with a supernaturally strong killer on the loose and Jean-Claude back in town. Even taking Richard out to eat was dangerous, but I reasoned it was less dangerous than taking him into my apartment. At least here he could tell we weren't screwing on a table.

I stalled another few seconds, taking a scalding sip of coffee. It really was good stuff. 

"Perceptive bastard, aren't you?" 

"High school science teacher. Not a lot of shit gets by me, Anita."

Great. Freaking peachy. I was living next door to a finely-tuned human bullshit detector. As if I didn't have enough to worry about already. Karma was really coming back to bite me on the ass. 

Why now, though? Why in this life and in this profession? I'd probably done the more good in Chicago than I'd done anywhere else, no matter how hard I'd tried to redeem myself for my part in what had happened in Russia. 

What the hell did I say to that? None of your fucking business? Tempting, but also false. It was Richard's business. Just being an attractive and sexually available male in my proximity would put him on Jean-Claude's hit list. And Richard would keep pushing until he got an answer, unknowingly digging his grave a little deeper with each interaction. 

The truth then, as much as it could be told. 

"It's my ex," I said, fingers flexing around the spoon without my conscious permission. Just the mere mention of him made me jumpy. "He's in town and he's tried to make contact with me." 

Richard's rich, dark eyes narrowed and those full lips pursed. "Not a happy parting, I assume?" 

A hysterical bark of laughter punched out of my chest before I could stop it. It was loud in the mostly empty diner and disrupted the spell of a lazy morning routine. The man at the register eyed me disdainfully. 

"Decidedly not." 

He nodded, unsurprised. "I wondered when you ran like that. I'm intimidating maybe, but your level of response..." 

Guilt swam in those dark eyes. They were such a deep, expressive color. I felt like I could drown in his pity and sorrow. 

"He was abusive, wasn't he?" 

"Not in the way you're meaning. He didn't hit me." 

That wasn't really the White Court's style. If you had to get obvious, the game was already lost. No, Jean-Claude had found an incredibly fucking twisted way to break my spirit. Wounds I could heal. What had been done to my lover...

"That doesn't mean he wasn't abusive," Richard argued. 

I waved a hand impatiently. The details of my far-flung past weren't really pertinent to this discussion. 

"Abusive or not, he's in town and I was expecting something nasty. Sorry I punched you. I won't do it again, I promise." 

"Anita, this is serious. You should go to the cops if he's harassing you." 

"Richard I _am_ the cops. Trust me, I know my options. He hasn't technically done anything illegal. He's got lawyers stretching from here to Arkansas and if I try to convict him on what basically amounts to nothing, I'll probably be the one paying damages in the end. I'll figure out the problem on my own."

The question was, how? I couldn't involve SI. All of their jobs were as stable as a house of cards and one well-placed phone call from Jean-Claude could nix a career. Not to mention the physical and mental threat he'd pose to the average vanilla mortal. Tough Sargent Murphy may have been, but she couldn't stand up to the mind-bending power of a determined White Court vampire. He'd turn her inside out like a pair of discarded jeans. 

There was the wizard, of course, but that came with a whole new set of problems. I wasn't sure I could be around him for any length of time and keep my secret under wraps. So what options were there?

Submit for the good of others, or run. I knew I couldn't do the former, even if it would save a million lives. I'd done my level best to curb the selfishness trained into me by my parents. This, however, was a line I couldn't bear to cross again. 

Which only left running. Damn it. I _liked_ this place and, as shitty as the job often was, I liked these people. I was doing real, tangible good here. I'd just be causing them more grief if they found this abandoned shell in my apartment complex, finally starting the long overdue putrefaction process. Murphy would probably link my alleged death to the current case in some way, spinning it off into a completely new and inaccurate direction. 

So I wouldn't run until the case was closed. But I had to find leads and find them fast. I couldn't do it in this diner. 

"I could run him off." 

Richard's suggestion cut through my doleful preoccupation like a hot knife through butter. 

"No!" Once again, my voice came out at a pitch unheard of in the confines of Stephen's diner. This time, I really didn't care. "No! Under no circumstances are you to approach him, Richard. He's dangerous." 

Richard's square jaw set like a stubborn, heavy anvil. I doubted I could budge his stern face with a fist if I were willing to give punching him another shot. 

"I'm tough, Anita. I can handle whatever he can throw at me." 

"Don't," I repeated, growing a little more desperate as the rigid look of defiance grew more pronounced. I'd meant to dissuade him, not send him charging in on a suicide mission. 

"Someone has to help you, Anita. If you're not going to go to the cops-" 

"I'll talk to a private eye," I said, leaping on the first thing I could think of to pacify him. "Murphy knows a guy. Dresden." 

Finally, the stubborn set of his jaw eased and he nodded. "Dresden's a good guy." 

I blinked at him once in surprise. Average Joe, high school teacher Richard Zeeman knew Harry Dresden? How? Why was it that everyone else seemed to know about the enigmatic wizard before I did? 

"You know him?" 

"Sure. Not personally, mind you. Got a few friends who interact with him regularly, though and I've heard nothing but good things." He squinted hard at me. "You promise you'll talk to him? I won't feel right leaving you alone unless I know you're going to be okay, Anita." 

"I'll talk to him," I lied. "Just as soon as I've had a chance to sleep." 

Richard skimmed my face like it was a page to be read and then finally nodded, either finding no treachery or simply accepting the lie at face value. 

"I'll still walk you home," he said. "And I'll camp out in front of your door." 

"You don't have to-" 

"I'm going to," he insisted. "Someone's got to look out for you." 

"Going to be my loyal guard dog, Richard?" 

"Woof." 

I grinned. I couldn't help myself. I liked Richard. Handsome, funny, and with a streak of stubborn chivalry a mile wide. If things had been different...

But they weren't. And Richard deserved better than the fate that awaited him if I started crossing lines. I'd let him play guard for me for a day or two. Maybe a week, until I unearthed the killer. And after that, I'd take my leave of Chicago. 

But God, was I going to be sad to see it go.


	7. Chapter 7

It seemed like I'd only been out for a matter of seconds when my windup alarm clock blared ten o'clock. I cracked one eye open and glared at it blearily as it did its impatient dance across the nightstand, hopping mad like it was every time it went off. I finally slapped it into silence, sat up, and stretched, my bones popping audibly in protest. 

I should have felt well-rested. After arriving home at ten and being tucked in by an insistent Richard, I'd technically been asleep for twelve hours. But the morning's magic use, compounded by the rectum-sealing fear of Jean-Claude had made for a parade of nightmares so vivid and visceral that I hadn't gotten much good out of the sleep I'd managed. 

Richard was in my kitchen, operating the (newly repaired) espresso maker like a pro. He turned to me just as I fixed my manacles on with a grimace, offering me a cup. 

"You look like death," he said brightly as I took the mug from his outstretched hand. 

"You charmer," I drawled. "I bet you say that to all the girls." 

He ignored the jab and finished off his own cup, setting it in the sink. 

"At least you have cute bedhead." 

I raised a hand self-consciously to my hair. It was the closest I'd come to having my exact hair color and texture since vacating my original body. It shouldn't really matter to me that Richard found it appealing. We couldn't do anything without it endangering his life. But...for once it was gratifying to get a compliment, knowing that maybe, just maybe, if I'd been able to meet him in my own true form, he might still have been interested. 

Richard crossed the room and gently disentangled my hand from my curls, swallowing the dainty appendage in his much larger grasp. He was so damn warm, almost feverishly so. Probably my imagination, as starved for touch as I had been. It should have been my first warning to pull away. 

"It's a joke, Anita. You look good, considering. Better than me, certainly." 

His bruises had somehow gotten worse. I was never going to not feel guilty about that. I ducked my head and yanked my hand out of his. He looked a little taken aback but didn't fight to keep a hold of me. It warmed me to him. I'd had enough of men who tried to control me. But I couldn't let this continue. I was grateful for the evening greeting, the coffee, the knowledge that he was safe, but at the end of the day? This couldn't happen. 

"I need to go," I muttered. 

"Anita..." he began. 

I crossed over to my cabinet, scrounged around for my usual to-go cup and realized with a grimace that I'd left the one Kincaid had given me in Murphy's squad car. I settled for the one that the Archive had gifted me instead. It had a cartoon penguin on the front that perfectly matched the plush toy she'd given me at Christmas a few years after we met. I'd named it Sigmund. She'd been thrilled. I sloshed the coffee into it haphazardly and screwed the lid on, tucking it into the crook of my elbow. 

I needed to be gone. The sooner the better. I had a spare change of work and casual clothes in the Jeep for emergencies, folded right on top of my bug out bag. It'd be a little wrinkly, but I'd make do. 

"Thank you for everything, Richard, really," I said, seizing my bag, weapons, and jacket from the floor before the shattered end table. "But I think you should probably go home and get some sleep. You can't stay forever." 

He tried to reply, but I didn't really give him time to say much, sweeping out the door, swinging it shut behind me before he could follow. I had to dream up an excuse for Murphy and Zerbrowski, get to work on time, and bring this case to a swift conclusion. Then I'd take my leave. Richard needed a nice, normal woman. All I could ever offer was death. 

I took the stairs down to the main floor fast, though there was no pursuit this time. I still didn't like being confined in the narrow space and prayed that I'd be gone before Jean-Claude had a chance to corner me inside of it. 

It had rained sometime during the day. The air was still thick, wet, and heavy, like a quilt had been draped over Chicago, trapping heat and moisture in beneath a layer of clouds. It was an unusually hot April evening and I didn't appreciate the extra moisture one bit. I was dewed with sweat by the time I reached my Jeep a few minutes later. 

Wiping the sweat off my upper lip with a grimace, I dug my keys out of my bag and searched for the fob to open the Jeep. 

Then nearly jumped out of my skin when someone very near my elbow cleared their throat.

I swung around, dropping my coffee, hand flying to the gun in it's holster before my mind registered that the voice had been female and the energy not that of a White Court vampire. My wheeling eyes instead fell on the little girl from the first crime scene. Eight years old, if that. Small for her age, painfully thin in the way that some children seemed to be. Now that she was closer, I could see the dark gray soaked into her collar and a chunk missing from her throat. 

"Nikki," I breathed, letting my hand drop away from the strap of the holster. "Christ, kid. You scared me." 

"Sorry," she mumbled. "But I needed to talk to you. And I couldn't cross the threshold or contact you in daylight so..." 

So this was the best she could do. 

"What are you doing here?" I asked, casting a look around. 

I didn't like loitering here. I felt like there were a pair of crosshairs trained on my back. My early-morning call to Kincaid hadn't been fruitful, which meant he was probably on an assignment God-knew-where killing God-knew-what. Which left me all on my lonesome against Jean-Claude. 

"I needed to tell you," she whispered. "Tell you about them. What they're doing. It's wrong." 

I crouched down so that we were eye to eye. I was sure it looked nuts to anyone watching and shuffled just a step back so that I could be crouched by the front tire. There, let them think I had car troubles. Nikki met my gaze with a somber one of her own. 

"Them? The ones killing the kids? I saw Camden's memory of you, Nikki. You didn't strike me as the sympathetic type." 

She winced and then dropped her gaze down to her shoes. Cute, satiny things with bows. Now that I was closer the entire outfit showed her age. The ruffled dress looked like it belonged in the 1910s or so. This wasn't a recent death. She was a strong one, if she was clinging this tenaciously to corporeality this long after her own demise. Strong could equal dangerous. 

"Sorry. I...I get so mad when they don't listen! And he could see me too! The whole time, not just at the end. Camden was special." 

"I'm certain his parents thought so too. Maybe you should have tried to find me earlier so this could have been prevented," I replied tartly. 

Cold, maybe. But true. 

She lapsed into guilty silence and I dragged in a deep breath through my nose. 

_Stop and fucking think, for once, woman._ I was about to scare away my only possible lead. I wouldn't condemn more innocents just because I was having a shitty day. 

"I'm sorry," I mumbled when I'd gotten a handle on my temper. "That was uncalled for. And we're not even properly introduced. I'm Anita Blake." 

"No you're not," she said softly. "She died. You're like me but not. Bigger. Stronger. Magical." 

Gotta hate a perceptive kid. I glowered at her until her pale, almost translucent skin seemed to blanch to an even lighter shade of gray. 

"I was Nicolette Seaton," she murmured. "And they killed me in 1912." 

My heart began to hammer violently against my ribs. Finally, a lead. How I'd let Murphy and the others know, I wasn't sure. But it was something, at least. I reached into my bag again and found the small, square notepad I usually stuffed into a blazer pocket during work hours. I jotted down her name and date of death and waited.

"What can you tell me about Pip?" I prompted gently when she didn't say anything more.

But Nicolette was done talking. She'd turned to face the opposite end of the parking lot, eyes gone huge in her little gray face. I followed her gaze and went stock still as well, as though I could somehow escape their notice. 

Twenty Lemurs undulated toward us, their dark cloaked bodies swaying as though moved by wind, though the breeze couldn't actually touch them. Hungry eyes gleamed out from beneath their cowls, all fixed on Nicolette. I couldn't blame her for the shiver that wracked her small frame. Goosebumps strained my skin at the mere sight of them, their malice pressing against my consciousness like the buffeting of a strong wind. 

"The other ghosts," she whispered frantically. "The other ghosts. They're working with Pip, you have to stop them. They're-" 

"Take the girl," a whispery female voice said as the lemurs came closer. "They'll care not which of us finishes her." 

I reached for my manacles at once, ready to pry them loose. I could banish them with enough time and focus. Perhaps not destroy them for good unless I was willing to eat them, take all that hate into myself. It'd erode my sanity still further, but if Nicolette had answers for me...

My hesitation lasted a second too long. The lemurs shot forward toward Nicolette and the girl bolted, disappearing into the ether leaving nothing but a panicked shriek behind her. The lemurs shot after her and I followed at a dead sprint. I couldn't lose Nicolette. Couldn't let the little girl get eaten by the monsters a second time. 

My feet slapped the damp pavement hard and I drew several stares as I pelted past a trickle of pedestrians walking home from work. I recognized at least two of my neighbors and knew I'd be getting questions later. I couldn't bring myself to care. Not with the answers so close and a girl on the line. 

I must have traveled at least twenty-five blocks before my stamina began to give. My lungs were burning, a small stitch burning in my side. I knew Anita Blake had been in shape before her untimely end, but I'd never been forced to run at her top speed for over a mile. The lemurs and girl were almost out of sight, outdistancing me easily. I turned a corner, trying to keep them in sight. 

And a sleek black car took a left turn right into the street, cutting me off as I made to cross after the crowd of shades. I let out a surprised cry, impacted the side of the car and turned it into a roll over the hood. It wasn't well controlled, and I ended up tumbling onto the other side of the street hard enough to scrape my hands and forearms. I came to a stop in the alleyway beyond, coughing and spluttering as I tried to recover the wind the car had knocked out of me. 

Fortunately, the car had been going a piddling five or ten miles an hour as it rounded the corner, or I'd be hurt a lot worse. I struggled onto my knees, reaching for the thorn manacles again. Thanks to the asshole in the black Benz, I'd lost Nicolette and the lemurs. Even using my senses to track them had a slim chance of working. Chicago had more ghosts than living people at this point. Most of them weren't able to be corporeal, even for a short time like Nicolette, but it didn't really matter to my necromancy. It was like wading through the sea, trying to track one wave in particular. 

The passenger's side door of the Benz opened and shut quickly and I finally regained my feet, ready to tell off the stranger coming to apologize for their carelessness. But when I saw who was standing at the mouth of the alley, I choked on my words. For the second time in an hour I froze, staring with horrified fascination at the figure before me. 

His dark hair was shoulder length now, which was shorter than I could ever remember it being. There was still enough of it to pull into a tail, which curled around his neck like a sleek blue-black snake, the illusion only ruined where it curled at the ends. He was dressed in a ridiculously loose shirt that Fabio might have sported on the cover of a bodice ripper. It was open down to his waist, tucked into a pair of black vinyl pants, and exposed a slice of pale, perfectly muscled chest. Thigh high boots completed the outfit. Jean-Claude Davenay.

He looked like a runaway Chippendale pirate who'd come to ravage, plunder, and pillage. 

And I was the prize. 

I had my gun out before I even consciously thought to draw. I had it up in mere seconds, pointed at his center of mass. 

"You stay the fuck away from me," I snarled. My voice shook, ruining the impression of stone-cold cop somewhat. "I mean it, Jean-Claude."

"That's not a terribly enthusiastic greeting, ma petite," he purred, completely unperturbed by the gun. 

He glided a little closer and I got a tighter grip on the gun. I wasn't entirely sure I could shoot him before he reached me. And if he got his hands on me, I was done for. I wouldn't care a whit about the case, the doomed ghost, the butchered kids. I'd be his again. 

Never. I'd swallow the gun before I let him have me. I might not be able to kill him but I could certainly kill me. 

My laugh came out horribly forced. "Arrogant bastard. Did you really think that I'd be happy to see you?" 

"You were last time," he said, a sinful little smile gliding over those full lips. "The last time you were solely mine. Before he interfered." 

"You fucking stole my mind, Jean-Claude. I wasn't _me_ anymore." 

"But I gave you pleasure, did I not? Was it such a high price to pay?" 

Another horrible, sneering laugh. I wanted to bend double and throw up. Just his mere presence was dredging up the memories of that long-ago time. 

"Should have known you'd buy that misogynistic tripe. It's not rape if she has an orgasm, right?" 

That smile disappeared, and the midnight blue of his eyes bled to silver. I could feel his Hunger from here, the devastating force of it focused solely on me. My entire body felt flushed, wanting and needy even as my mind screamed a denial. 

Then he was in front of me, gone in one blink and caging me against the alley wall the next, unbearably close. His long-fingered hands cupped my face and I whimpered. Fear or pleasure, I wasn't sure. With my last conscious thought I jammed the gun into his sternum. 

"Back. The. Fuck. Off."

He had the gall to look wounded. "Would you truly shoot me, ma petite?"

"I have a name, Davenay, and you damn well know that. I've had enough of your infantilizing bullshit to last me centuries."

He smiled that lovely predator's smile, sharp and a little cruel, but made his absurdly handsome face no less attractive for it. The sight of it threatened to sweep my legs right out from under me. They felt like barely set Jello, like I'd spill to the ground at his feet at any second.

It wasn't fucking fair. He'd never touched this body before this night. Never tasted me in this skin. But the connection ran that deep. Jean-Claude had once ravaged my fucking _soul._

"Would you truly shoot me, _Julianna?_ "

"You bet your ass," I snarled, and pulled the trigger.


	8. Chapter 8

Jean-Claude dodged the shot. Mostly. 

In the second before I pulled the trigger he'd managed to seize my gun hand, snap my wrist to the side in one brutal twist and aim the gun away from his body. Not enough to completely avoid injury, but enough to keep it from being fatal. 

The bullet took a chunk the size of a quarter out of his right bicep, knocking him back a step from me. I tried to use the momentary reprieve to squirm out from beneath him and make a break for it. Between the fear, the ringing in my ears, and the hint of pleasure he'd forced from me I couldn't bully my legs into moving fast enough. 

Jean-Claude looped an arm around my waist and dragged me back, even as I flailed. He slammed me back against the side of the building, mashing my face so hard against the brick that my nose crunched. Blood bubbled down over my lips and dripped from my chin. I groaned once in protest. It hurt like a motherfucker.

Maybe I deserved it for what I'd done to Richard. We'd have matching noses if this kept up. 

"You little bitch," he snarled into my ear. White Court wiles made it sound like velvet dragged over gravel. "You're going to pay for that. Raith won't be happy." 

Ah. So he hadn't been in town just for me then. When the White King called, all the little vampires fell into line whether they liked it or not. 

"Lord Raith doesn't need you pretty," I said, my laugh coming out more like a cough. I still hadn't gotten my breath back. "You're not really his type." 

"It's business. Silverlight Studios needs a new star attraction." 

I finally managed a proper laugh. Silverlight Studios, the biggest adult entertainment company on the west coast. 

"Explains the porn star pirate look," I choked out around the hysterical fit of giggles. "You look ridiculous, Jean-Claude. More so than usual." 

He snarled and thrust a hand into my hair, whipping my head around so I faced him. It wrenched my neck, another layer of agony on my already tortured body. I was tempted to cut ties with the body's nerve endings, just to spare myself pain. If I did it, it would leave the body pretty much a boneless puppet, easily manipulated. I couldn't risk it. 

I stared him down, though my eyes begged for mercy. His furious face glowed silver and exuded inhuman beauty. It was the look of a tainted angel watching with furious satisfaction as the world burned. 

"I suppose I'll just have to take what I need from you now," he murmured, eyes dropping speculatively to my mouth. "I'd hoped to wait for privacy. I do remember you like the feel of silk on silk. I had the sheets specially ordered for you, and a beautifully cut Neiman Marcus gown on standby." 

"Go to h-" 

His lips crushed mine, swallowing the last of my exclamation. My body sagged, as pliant and helpless as if I'd cut the ties myself. Silvery pleasure rioted through my body for a delicious half-second, drowning the screaming panic in a wave of blissful calm. 

This was right. This was my purpose, to give to him. Make him happy. I wanted to-

Then, with another snarl, Jean-Claude pulled back from me, one pale hand flying to his mouth. Blackened blisters raised on his skin anywhere he'd been touching me. Naked shock played over his face before anger eclipsed it with such suddenness it shocked me out of the stupor his kiss had knocked into me. 

"Who?" he demanded, hand balling into a fist. He looked like he'd hit me. "Who have you been with, ma petite? Which buck have you loved?"

Love. Delirious hope danced a jig in the back of my head. I was still loved. Protected. Which meant that Jean-Claude couldn't feed on me. 

"There hasn't been anyone since..." I began.

Jean-Claude's mouth popped open in unflattering surprise. "Since _Asher? C'est impossible!_ It's been decades!"

I almost agreed with him. I hadn't seen Asher since that fateful night so many years ago, when Jean-Claude had discovered the protection Asher had inadvertently bestowed upon me. The rage. His terrible revenge when he'd forced Asher to touch me, and for me to touch him. The smell of char, the horrible sizzle of his skin as my very touch destroyed his flesh...

I'd never stopped pining for him. But how could Asher still love me after all that had been done to him?

Jean-Claude's eyes narrowed. "I'll still have you, ma petite. Perhaps find that strapping buck you seem fond of. Bring him to you in the dead of night and have him take you until you're senseless. You'll beg me." 

"I don't think so," I huffed. 

Then I wedged my knee up between us, jamming it between his legs. He made an undignified wheeze and staggered away from me, clutching himself. I whipped the gun up and fired again and again, unloading the clip in his direction.

Again, he dodged the bullets, most of them going wide and hitting the Benz he'd run me down with. With a savage snarl of frustration, he disappeared into the innards and the car sped away. 

I swayed in place, clutching my injured arm and gun to my chest, trying to heave in a breath. My hands, forearms, and one side of my face felt rubbed raw. My nose throbbed with every labored inhale. Exhaustion threatened to buckle my knees. 

But I was alive and free of his control. Thank Heaven for small mercies. 

I needed to call someone. I didn't want a hospital. I didn't think I had the wherewithal to fabricate a story for the ER staff, nor the strength to face my comrades in SI. If I saw pity in Zerbrowski's eyes, I'd scream. I was so fucking tired of being everyone's victim. And now that I knew about my protection, maybe I didn't have to be.

 _I'm done,_ I decided. _Done letting the universe fuck me in the ass. Time to grab this life by the balls. I'm in charge now._

I'd keep telling myself that until I believed it. For now, I needed help. 

I trudged down the street, swaying like a drunk as I tried to shake off the aftereffects of the attempted feeding. I caught still more stares and a few passersby actually stopped in their tracks. I must look like a shambling corpse, pale and covered in my own blood. 

I came to a halt next to a shabby little booth and muscled the creaking door open with effort. The receiver of the payphone was sticky when I lifted it from the cradle. I tried not to think about what might be on it. I dug a battered copy of the yellow pages from the little alcove beneath and flipped through, stopping on the advertisement Zerbrowski had mentioned with a scoff. 

HARRY DRESDEN - WIZARD

Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations.

Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.

No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties, or Other Entertainment.

With a sigh, I dialed the number. It was late. He might not pick up. 

On the third ring, the line crackled with static and a familiar baritone said;

"Harry Dresden speaking." 

"Dresden, this is Detective Blake." I dragged in a shaking breath, tried not to sob. "I need your help."


	9. Chapter 9

I remained crouched in the telephone booth for another thirty minutes as a cloudburst doused Lincoln Park. The interior smelled like piss and the less I speculated about the dark stains in the corner, the better. Still, it was preferable to being injured _and_ soaked to the skin. 

My phone began to chime at the twenty-minute mark. Zerbrowski's number first, then eventually Murphy's. I let both go to voicemail. I didn't have an explanation handy for them yet, and the truth would only worry them. Eventually, the phone was chiming an unending, infernally catchy rendition of Michael Jackson's "Bad." I ended up turning the damn thing off. 

A good thing too, because not five minutes after I'd powered down the cell phone, a Volkswagen Beetle trundled to a stop, parking in a decidedly illegal manner before the curb. Only after determining that the thing was the battered, homely bug that I'd spotted at the last crime scene did I exit. Jean-Claude would never do anything so _déclassé_ as drive a secondhand vehicle. 

It took some doing to get the passenger's side door open. My good arm was broken, and my left arm was trembling so badly from the cold and the shock of the encounter that I should have been put to work shaking cocktails. 

After a minute of struggle, the wizard saved me, leaning over to push the door open from the inside. I wriggled through the gap, slid into the seat, and shut the door clumsily. Only then did I release my rigid posture, lolling against the headrest with a groan. The interior of the car wasn't warm, per se, but it was at least dry and kept the wind off. 

"Christ," Dresden muttered, taking stock of me as I struggled to secure the seat belt around my waist. "What happened to you, Blake?" 

"Just drive, please," I said quietly. "I can't...I don't want to talk about it right now." 

"You need the hospital." 

"No hospitals," I said louder and more sharply than I'd intended. I took a shuddering breath, modified my tone, and tried again. "No hospitals. I can't."

Dresden's dark eyes searched my face intently for a minute. I wasn't sure what he saw, but something in my expression must have convinced him not to press. He nodded once, put the car into gear, and guided the Beetle carefully into Chicago traffic. 

"Can you at least tell me what I'm dealing with, Detective?" he asked mildly. "I've only got general first aid at my place. Anything fancier and I'll need to phone a friend, since you're dead set against the ER."

"Broken wrist, broken nose, road rash, and a possible fracture on my cheekbone," I said dully, cataloging the injuries with a very subtle probe along the body's bits and bobs. I doubted the wizard even noticed. "He hit me pretty hard." 

"He?" 

"Dresden," I said warningly. 

He sighed. "Okay. But you owe me an explanation when we arrive, Detective. Truth. Not whatever lie you're cooking up for Murphy."

Jesus H. Christ. Another one? First Richard, with his too-keen intuition and now Dresden. It was bad enough to have one man mucking about in things he shouldn't, let alone two. At least I could fob a lie off on Richard that he'd happily chew and swallow. Not a trick I was likely to get past the wizard. 

I stared blankly out of the windshield and said nothing. 

It was difficult to say how long the drive took. The clock on Dresden's dash had long since ceased to function, my wristwatch had been smashed by Jean-Claude's attack, and my cell phone wouldn't last more than a few seconds in the presence of a wizard of his caliber. Even the sluggish throb of my heart wasn't a reliable measure. 

Dresden pulled the Beetle into a spot before a very large, very old building that had probably been a boarding house in years past. It had that look to it. Newer buildings tended to incorporate a lot more composite materials. This place was mostly wood and looked like a fire inspector's worst nightmare. One electrical failure and this place would go up in smoke. 

"Hold tight," Dresden said warningly, spearing me to the seat with a look. "None of that police machismo, Detective. You want to avoid a hospital? You'll have to let me take care of you for a bit. Don't try to get out on your own."

I was tempted to tell him exactly what orifice he could jam that sentiment up. I'd taken care of myself just fine long before he was a spark in his mother's womb. But I'd been the one to call him and, after what Jean-Claude had put me through, what dignity did I have to lose? I didn't really have room to bitch. 

But I wanted to. 

Dresden rounded the car in the time it took me to stew and opened the passenger's side door. Rain slanted in sideways, most of it shedding off of Dresden's duster, with only a few icy sprays making it past his broad back to me. He had to curve most of his substantial frame to lean into the car to undo my seat belt. It put his neck and broad shoulders very near my face. If I wanted to, I could have reached out to stroke the dark, wispy hairs at the nape of his neck, trail a finger down his neck to his shoulders and...

I made a soft growling sound in the back of my throat. I needed to get a fucking grip on my libido, especially now that I knew that abstinence really was the best course to safety at present. 

Note to self. Get a damn vibrator.

Dresden caught the sound and paused, hand on the buckle. It was an awkward angle, but he craned his neck as best he could to look at me. 

"Am I hurting you?" 

"No. Just get me inside, Dresden," I ground out the words, paused, realized how rude it probably sounded and tacked on a grudging; "Please." 

He undid the belt and then set about the awkward task of maneuvering me into his arms. Easier said than done, when I was hurt and he was too tall to gracefully disentangle me. Imagine seizing a struggling toy poodle from a clown car. Funny anywhere but in practice. 

He finally managed it though, curling the duster around me as best he could, keeping the rain off us both as he jogged for the boarding house. The motion jostled my bad arm, and I lost a few crucial seconds of our trip, gritting my teeth around a scream, mentally cursing myself for calling the oafish wizard at all. I found myself staring at a plain door on what appeared to be the basement level. 

Even without access to my magic, I could tell the spell craft on this door was impressive. Even the backs of my teeth seemed to hum at this proximity. What it lacked in finesse it made up for in punch. I once again had to readjust Dresden's threat potential in my mental ledger. Not just a White Council wizard but Warden potential, and possibly more, if he lived long enough to grow into his gifts. 

I could still kill him if I had to but...I imagined he'd make me work up a sweat first. 

Why was the wizard wasting his time aiding the police in Chicago? With this level of magical muscle, he could work damn near anywhere doing damn near anything and be paid more than the pittance Chicago PD would offer. Why live in this old building? Why allow himself to be openly scoffed at? 

He dismantled the wards with relative ease and then stepped down into the apartment. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the gloom so I could get a good look at the place and what I saw baffled me even more. 

To call the place spartan would have implied some sort of design choice on the wizard's part. It was more that the space was merely filled by whatever the man could scrounge together. An old couch was pushed against one wall, an Elvis area rug and few Navajo rugs were draped on the floor in lieu of anything better. Star Wars posters decorated the walls. There was a small fireplace, currently unlit. And...that was about it for the living room. A door nearby presumably led to a bedroom, and I assumed there was some sort of kitchen and bathroom setup around here somewhere. It was the oddest combination of hobo chic and frat boy's dorm room that I'd ever encountered. 

The apartment I lived in was modest compared to the luxury I'd once been used to and it looked lavish when juxtaposed with Dresden's home.

How did he live like this? _Why_ did he live like this, when he was capable of doing so much more?

Dresden deposited me as gently as he could on the couch, disturbing an enormous gray tomcat in the process. The feline arched his back, stared at Dresden rather disdainfully before leaping to the floor and sauntering away, tail flicking in agitation as he sought out a new perch. 

"Don't mind Mister," Dresden said, arranging me longways on the couch. The thing was fairly comfortable, despite clearly being secondhand. "He's a drama king. Wait here and I'll retrieve the first aid supplies from the lab." 

"Lab?" 

"Sub-basement. My wizardly lair, if you will." 

I rolled my eyes. "The man cave, you mean?" 

He snorted. "Something like that. I'll be right back." 

Dresden strode away before I could comment further. 

I had to admit a certain level of curiosity. I hadn't had close contact with wizards outside of my family or my father's disciples. For very obvious reasons no White Council wizard had ever invited me into their home, let alone sat down to discuss magical theory in their sanctum. What must it be like to be able to have frank and open discussions with another practitioner? How would Dresden's craft differ from say, Grevane's? 

Maybe I ought to have a girl's day out with the Archive, just to take the edge off the isolation. The little girl would be able to run circles around me, certainly, but in these fraught times I could use a friend who truly understood the limitations I placed on myself. 

Dresden reemerged a few minutes later carrying a large first aid kit, and an assortment of bandages, braces, and salves to go along with it. I was already cringing at the thought of iodine on the abraded skin. Dresden caught sight of my horrified face and actually grinned. Jerk. 

"It hurts like a son of a bitch," he said in a conciliatory tone. "Michael's wife Charity loves the stuff. I suspect she just wants to punish me for dragging her husband into trouble." 

He looked like he expected further inquiry. The social contract demanded I ask who the hell Michael was and why his wife had it in for Dresden. Honestly though? I didn't care, so long as I could get out of this with minimal damage done to my cover. Maybe if I didn't press into his personal life he wouldn't go digging into mine. 

Dresden frowned when I said nothing, the action creasing lines into his face. I doubted he was much past thirty, if that, but still, the lines were pronounced. It was the look of a man who didn't see much joy in his life. 

I could commiserate. Almost every body I inhabited got severe frown lines by the time I was through. 

Dresden wasn't kidding. The iodine swab hurt like a son of a bitch when he slathered the stuff on after picking the grit from the wounds. He bandaged both my hands and forearms after applying antibiotic ointment, then set about setting my arm and putting it in a sling. He finished with my nose, pushing it back into place before taping it. If I'd had use of my good arm, I'd have slugged him. Motherfucking son of a bitch did it hurt.

He didn't have the gentle hands of a doctor, but moved with a surety of purpose that told me he'd done this before. I swallowed back more questions. It wasn't my business. 

After that Dresden futzed with the fire for a few minutes until he got a steady flame going. Then he fished a semi-fluffy pillow and a blanket from his bedroom, stuffing the former under my head while allowing me to arrange the later. He folded his overlarge body into a crouched position by my head and spoke in a would-be casual tone.

"Now about that explanation, Detective. What happened?" 

Well fuck. 

An almost involuntary sigh flapped my lips. I was beginning to wish I'd taken my chances with the ER. But as shocky as I'd been right after the attack, I wasn't sure if I could have looked like anything but what I was. The survivor of assault, attacked once more by my former rapist. I was just finding my footing in SI. I didn't want any of them tiptoeing around me at work. I didn't want exceptions made for me. I didn't do pity. I couldn't stand the questions. If someone had so much as whispered the suggestion 'rape kit' I would have fucking lost it. 

At least I didn't have to work with the wizard often. If this case was solved quickly, maybe I wouldn't have to deal with him for a good long while. 

Nothing for it. I'd have to try for truth. A fraction of it, at least. 

"It was a vampire. I'm not sure what flavor. I didn't get a good look at it. I was tracking a different lead at the time." 

Dresden was turned away from me, so I couldn't see his face well enough to gauge his reaction. The muscles at the back of his neck bunched, shoulders tensing as my words penetrated. 

"I wasn't aware that SI had tackled any cases involving the Vampire Courts." 

"They haven't. I have...contacts, in the supernatural side of Chicago. Not as good as yours, probably. But I know things."

Harry turned to face me then, eyes narrowed, suspicion stealing across his face. Ah, familiar territory at last. Now he looked like almost every White Council bastard I'd had the misfortune to run across over the years. 

"And you acquired them how?" 

Moment of truth. Lies bundled in a layer of truth as thin as cling wrap. 

"I have a gift. Or a curse, depending on how you look at it. Very minor. I don't even think I'd count as a hedge wizard." 

Harry blinked once, and the suspicion dimmed, even if it didn't totally disappear. 

"You're a practitioner?" 

"Barely." 

"Still," he insisted. "Magic is magic. Why not tell Murphy about this? After all SI has tackled, you had to know she'd believe you."

A short bark of laughter escaped me. I wished it hadn't. It really hurt to laugh. Even talking was an enormous pain. I'd be grateful for some privacy so I could disengage somewhat from the body's nerve endings. 

"Yes, because 'I hear dead people' will go over well. It's not like I'm already on the last leg of my career or anything. I don't need a mental health evaluation on top of everything else, Dresden. I've already been institutionalized once for this shit. I don't see them unless they're powerful enough to manifest all on their own. I sure as hell can't control what they say to me. I don't even mingle in the supernatural community much. Do you know how fucking exhausting it is to have people side-eye you for something you can't help? For something you'd give anything to change? To stare at you like they expect you to turn into a fucking thing of nightmares at the drop of a hat?" 

His expression shuttered, giving me very little to go by, but his voice betrayed a hint of emotion when he spoke. Not the disgust I'd been expecting but...pity? Bitterness? Anger? I couldn't quite pin it down.

"Believe it or not, I _do_ know something about that, Detective," he muttered. 

We were silent for a few uncomfortable minutes while each of us chewed on the new information available. That brief sentence had cut through some of my confusion and given me an insight into the man. I now understood why the wizard chained himself to this miserable little place and the thankless task he undertook. Contrition.

Harry Dresden had something to atone for as well. 

When he spoke again he'd shifted to a more conversational tone, as if we'd just switched topic from inanities to something more interesting. 

"You got a lead from the spooky side?" 

I laughed again, wincing as it send pain spider-webbing from my broken nose into the right cheekbone. I definitely had a fracture. Peachy. 

"Yeah, from the spooky side. A little girl ghost named Nicolette Seaton. She tried to warn me about something, but it wasn't very clear. All I really know is that there are multiple attackers, more ghosts involved somehow, and the ringleader is allegedly named Pip. It was all she could tell me. I think she was chased off by the others." 

"You can't be sure?" 

I fixed him with a droll stare. "She could barely manifest, Dresden. Whatever was after her didn't manifest at all. She seemed scared. I tried to keep pace with her, but I was attacked before I could get more." 

"By a vampire," he said slowly. "That...actually explains a lot. The hair was brittle, colorless, and I couldn't get an accurate fix from it. It explains the parts missing from the kids. The decreased blood volume Butters noted. Black Court. It has to be." 

My mouth popped open a little as puzzle pieces slid abruptly into place. I'd only meant to sell the lie to Dresden in case we ran into Jean-Claude sometime during this undertaking. But now that he mentioned it...

"It's got to be a scourge of them," I said, cottoning onto his theory and running with it, given the clues I had on hand. "She kept saying 'they' were in Undertown."

She hadn't said any such thing, but Dresden's growing enthusiasm allowed him to gloss gracefully over the slip. The excitement didn't last long, though, as the implications of what we were facing truly sunk in. 

A scourge of Black Court vampires in league with a group of ghosts. It didn't make much sense, even if this Pip character was a practitioner. There was still something I was missing. 

"We need to tell Murphy," Dresden muttered. "She needs to know what we worked out." 

"What you worked out. Leave me out of this, Dresden. Take all the fucking credit. I don't care. I just want to keep my head down, if it's all the same to you." 

"Detective-" 

"Please." 

The word squeezed out of me almost unwillingly. I hated begging. I'd done enough of it when I'd been Jean-Claude's thrall. But I couldn't do this. Not now. 

Dresden's gaze swept over me, lingering on the bruises, the blood still staining my shirt, the bandages that swathed me. Something very like pity softened his expression and I wanted to slap him for it. 

"You're sure?" 

"Yes." 

He finally rolled his shoulders in a shrug and blew out the breath he'd been holding. 

"It's your call, Detective. I'm going to contact Murphy and let her know you're safe and that we have a lead. You should probably get some sleep if you can. I'll be back in an hour. Will you be okay here?"

Thank fucking God. I could relax my grip on the body and start blocking out the pain receptors for the foreseeable future. I snuggled deeper into the pillow, drawing the blanket around myself to form a cocoon of sorts. 

"I'm a big girl, Dresden. Anything comes a-knocking, I'll handle myself." 

He still looked doubtful, but let it go, striding into the room to make the call to Murphy. I didn't relax fully until he'd swept out into the night to meet with her. 

I was _the_ monster. Lesser monsters beware. Trespass at your own fucking risk bloodsuckers. 

A smiled a little to myself. Then I let myself drift, floating in the chilly middle state between life and the beyond, assured that, at least for now, I was safe.


	10. Chapter 10

I woke shivering several hours later in the dim interior of a house I didn't recognize. For a second that seemed to stretch much longer, I panicked, sure that Jean-Claude had taken me so deep into the recess of my mind I'd begun to hallucinate. A few things convinced me otherwise, allowed me to anchor myself to reality once again and realize where I was and what had happened. 

The decor was the dead giveaway. Much like the vehicle, I didn't think Jean-Claude could bear to create a space so utterly devoid of style, even in an illusion. The pain was a good indicator as well. Jean-Claude had gone so far as to break my collarbone and hip on one occasion and I'd been so far gone I hadn't felt a thing. My stomach churned, threatening to heave what little I'd been able to put into it onto one of Dresden's rugs. 

I hated thinking of those times. Hated the blank silvery nothing that spanned years of my life. When I'd been little more than a bitch in heat, so thoroughly mind-fucked that I'd have done anything and anyone he told me to. 

But more than that? I hated my mother for selling me to him. Someday I'd stop running and I would kill that conniving bitch once and for all. 

I glanced at my watch out of habit and sighed when I found the face of it cracked. Right. Jean-Claude had smashed more than just my face. I didn't think I could have been out for too long, because Dresden was nowhere in sight. I strained my ears, but couldn't hear him either. I was on my own. 

My arm was stiff and sore in the sling, but an experimental flex of my wrist revealed I'd at least been able to heal some. I disliked using the power I'd gained during _that day_ but in this case? It was necessary. Kincaid had been absolutely right the day he'd found me. I had a choice. Burn myself to death on a pyre of guilt, or march through the flames and find a way to live with what had happened. May be even do something good with it. 

I was pretty sure my nose was fused properly. I'd left the abrasions be, lest I arouse suspicion. Still, I wanted my gun hand at least capable of firing in case of attack. 

So I stretched my muscles, taking a tour of Dresden's apartment. The journey was pathetically brief. It was small, the decorations sparse. He didn't even have much in his pantry or icebox. How the hell did the man feed himself? 

It was on the second run through the place when I stumbled, a rug bunching beneath my feet, sending me skidding for a half a foot before I came to a stop. I turned with a scowl, ready to kick the thing back into place, maybe with a choice swear word. I paused instead, staring at the visible seam that the rug had been trying to hide. 

A sub-basement? 

Cautiously, casting a glance back toward the door first, I knelt and then lifted the trapdoor an inch and peered down. 

With the limited light available I was only able to see steps leading down into inky darkness. By all rights, I should lower the trapdoor, drape the rug back over it, and return to my position on the couch. I'd made a resolution not so long ago not to pry, lest Dresden do the same. But...I had to admit to a certain level of professional curiosity. How long had it been since I'd even held the tools of my trade? After _that day_ I'd sworn off almost all magic, except what I needed to survive. It had been like cutting off a limb to deny it, but I'd done it, hoping that maybe someday, perhaps centuries from now, the immense power would atrophy and leave me mortal and capable of embracing that final death. 

Peeking into the wizard's lab might be cathartic, in its own way, dousing me in a little warm nostalgia. A little daydream of the what ifs and maybes of what life could have been if I hadn't had such shit luck to be born to evil parents. 

Fuck it. I could always tell Dresden that I'd been searching for him down here if caught. 

I lifted the trapdoor all the way and then spent a minute trying to locate my keyring with its little flashlight attachment. I clicked it on and then wedged it between my teeth before starting down the stairs. The journey was mercifully brief and deposited me in a slightly musty room. I swung the beam of my flashlight over the room, taking in the details with an avarice that surprised me. 

Tables dominated most of the room. A long wooden one in the center of the laboratory and three more pushed against the walls. In the middle of the floor was a circle done in brass. A little simple, but it would be effective. 

Every surface was stuffed full with something. Cages, boxes, jars, and cans. I snorted a little when I saw that some of the more benign ingredients were kept in Tupperware. I had the oddest vision of Dresden mingling with suburban moms at a Tupperware party and managed to tickle myself, just a little. 

There was more of course. Old books with weathered spines and names I was too far away to read properly. Notebooks and...

I froze, rooted to the spot when my flashlight beam swept over the bleached skull, carved with runes. I took a step back, almost falling flat on my ass as my calves knocked hard against the bottom step. 

Shit, shit, shit. What was it doing here? How did the wizard get it? 

All I knew for sure is that I had to get out of here before...

Orange lights flickered to life and filled the sockets, rolling after a second to fix on me. 

Before it saw me. Shit. 

I drew myself up to my full height, refusing to quail before the spirit of all things. Some things were too demeaning to tolerate, even with my dignity ground so thoroughly in the dirt. 

The spirit spoke, voice a tense whisper, almost as if the thing was as frightened as I was. 

"What are you doing here, Mistress Kemmler?"


	11. Chapter 11

"Don't call me that," I snapped reflexively.

I craned my neck to check the stairs, half expecting the lanky wizard to traipse down at precisely the wrong time. Those sorts of things always seemed to happen to me. 

I stood poised to bolt for a painfully long second, relaxing only a fraction when nothing above stirred. I let my breath out slow and turned back to face the skull once more. 

"I'm not like that anymore. I'm not Julienne Kemmler. I don't ever want to bear that name again." 

The name Kemmler was about as reviled as Hitler's in supernatural circles. Just being associated with it by blood kept me up some nights, wondering if that madness was in me as well. If that old saying had some truth to it—blood will out. 

"That doesn't answer the question," the spirit said, still whispering, as though afraid mere volume would set me off. "What are you doing here, Julianna?" 

My first knee-jerk reaction was to tell the spirit to mind it's own business. It was a servant, little more than a tool in the hands of wizards. But it smacked of those earlier days and sounded altogether too much like my father for my liking. 

"I think the better question is what are _you_ doing here, spirit? The last I saw you, my father had you locked away in his safe." 

Which also begged the question of how this penniless wizard acquired it. Anyone who had any idea what the spirit was capable of would have kept it for themselves or sold it on the black market with an obscenely large price tag. The spirit was pure intellect, with a greater understanding of magic than most mortals could ever dream of. Its powers and influence had upped my father from incredibly difficult to defeat, to damn near impossible to kill. 

And Harry Dresden now possessed that power. Perhaps he'd completely overlooked the thing's potential and was using it to bookend the various bodice rippers and Playboy magazines. Or maybe he really did know what the spirit could do and was hiding a darker nature than I'd previously imagined.

Either he was an idiot or a danger. Or perhaps a dangerous idiot. 

"I trade hands," the spirit replied cryptically. "That doesn't answer how you're here, Julianna. When we were in Russia, your father prepared you as the sacrifice for his rite. How did you escape?" 

"I didn't." 

The flame eyes flared a little brighter, growing a little round in surprise. " _Oh._ I see." 

I shifted uneasily on the step. The spirit was scrutinizing me again. I could practically feel the prickle of its magic on my skin as it probed me. 

"I can't sense the evidence of that on you." 

I lifted my wrist and shook my sleeve back so he could see the specially crafted thorn manacles I wore. They jangled when I shook them for emphasis. 

"It's being directed into the Nevernever. I didn't want any of this, spirit." 

"Bob." 

I raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?" 

"That's what Dresden has named me." 

My lips pressed together in a line as I struggled not to say something inappropriate to that. Trust Dresden to give a spirit with an encyclopedic knowledge of magic, monsters, and the human condition a prosaic name like Bob.

"Fine. I'll call you Bob if you call me Anita. That's the name that belongs to this body." 

The skull bobbed a little in assent. It paused, shook a little, rattling along its perch like a vibrating cell phone before it asked, "Have you killed him?"

It took a few seconds for me to process the question and another few to compose myself enough to answer. I felt a little foolish for not considering this angle. The spirit...Bob...had not interacted with me since the early days of my tutelage. I'd been an eager pupil then, willing to go to disgusting lengths to please Father. I'd never taken joy in killing, but I had done it before. Those had been the days when my power had only equaled mother's. She'd found it necessary to dispose of me before I could be the true heir to Kemmler in every sense. 

"No. Your master is reporting a development to Chicago PD. We're working the case together. Anita Blake was a detective with SI." 

"Did you kill her?" 

My will not to scowl at the spirit crumbled. "No, I didn't. I haven't killed anyone in some time, sp—Bob. I've killed things. Most of them in Undertown. I'm the bane of Shellicobbs everywhere, but I haven't killed a human in seventy-five years. I'm done with that. The bodies are dead or dying when I find them. I don't use my magic aside from that." 

_Except to heal myself or invade the minds of dead little boys,_ my mind tacked on guiltily. 

"I've gone cold turkey," I said finally. "Decades of near-sobriety now, Bob. I deserve a chip or something." 

"It doesn't work that way," Bob said quietly. "Black magic is cirrhosis of the soul. Nothing to be done to reverse it. You can only get worse, not better." 

A knot stuck in my throat as the words slammed home. It was a confirmation of all my worst fears. I'd hoped that perhaps with the results of the rite I could be different. Healing if not completely healthy. The spirit was even older than me. If he said it, it was probably true. 

I shook my head, no matter how fruitless the denial. What I had been didn't determine what I could be. So long as I existed, there had to be a chance. I hadn't known any better when I'd begun using. Intent had to matter.

"Harry needs to know." 

Those four words snapped me out of my brief but fervent pity party. My head jerked up and I glared at the spirit. It stared back, orange flame eyes unblinking and somber. 

"Don't you dare."

No matter how non-conformist this wizard appeared, I doubted he'd tolerate a necromancer (and one of the most well-known and dangerous to ever exist) to roam free in his city. The White Council would intervene. I couldn't have that. 

"He's my master. I won't let you harm him." 

"I swear on my magic that I won't harm him, spirit. Not unless he strikes the first blow." 

"Not good enough." 

Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. Helplessness clenched my heart in a vise, warring with a rising tide of anger. Black thoughts stirred at the back of my head, a murder of crows trapped and furious. No. I would not let my years of self-denial amount to nothing. 

"I can't let you do that, Bob," I said softly. 

I eyed the ball-peen hammer on the bench beneath the shelf. It could probably shatter the spirit's vessel. Harder for it to communicate that way unless it found a new, living vessel. 

An idea struck me. Distasteful and incredibly demeaning, but less obvious than smashing the thing's current receptacle. Dresden was sure to notice and ask questions. This way, I could forestall the inevitable. Perhaps even reason with the spirit. 

I wasn't sure how it managed it, but the skull seemed to shrink back, expression fearful as I approached. I undid my manacles carefully, a full-body shudder of relief seizing me as magic flooded my body. The manacles clinked dully as I slid them into my pocket.

"Julianna, don't-" 

I snatched the skull from the shelf, standing on tiptoe to reach it. Bob yelped in fright as I fumbled him for a moment. Hurtling to the ground from that height would almost certainly smash the vessel as well. I caught the skull just in time, hugged it to my chest, and breathed a little sigh of relief. 

"What knockers!" the skull exclaimed.

I stared down at it for a moment, a small, surprised smile curling my lips. 

"Oh, thank you, doctor." 

"Ah, at last someone who understands my sparkling wit. Dresden is-" 

But whatever Dresden might be, I never found out. With direct contact, what I was about to do was much easier. I seized on the moment of distraction and yanked at the spirit's essence, shoving the skull so hard against my sternum it hurt, practically motorboating the skull. It had to be as close to my core as I could get it for this to work. 

Bob realized what I was about to do moments too late. He resisted, retreating as far back into the receptacle as he could go. It acted as a threshold of sorts and reaching into it without permission cost me half my magic. But half was more than enough. I grabbed the spirit by the scruff of his metaphorical neck and dragged him free of the receptacle, hoisted the thing into the air, and then stuffed the cloud of agitated orange sparks into my mouth. 

Forcing the thing down my throat felt like trying to swallow a live, squirming electric eel. It sparked and burned on the way down. Once or twice it tried to bunch and turn back on itself, doing nauseating contortions as it attempted to escape me. My magic shoved it down until it was fully seated inside of me. I couldn't precisely subsume its essence, but I could at least match it. 

Then, with a suddenness that startled me, the spirit ceased struggling. Instead, awareness of it bubbled in the back of my mind like a swimmer emerging from the murky depths of a lake. One moment it was battering around inside of my core and the next, it was before me, it's avatar looking like a very annoyed James Dean, complete with red jacket and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He removed the cigarette and blew a stream of smoke straight into my face. 

The illusionary smoke still managed to choke me. I waved it away, shooting the now-smirking spirit a glare. 

"You know," the spirit said conversationally. "This isn't what I mean when I say I'd like to be inside a woman." 

I boggled at him, irritation forgotten. "That's..." 

Words failed me. God, I had just swallowed its essence and it was making crude innuendos? I knew that it was often a reflection of its master. Under my father, it hadn't possessed an ounce of good humor and its default was disdainful arrogance. The fact it was cracking jokes and wore a light leer told me more than I'd wanted to know about Dresden. 

"So you swallow instead of spit," he continued, a smirk twisting his lips. "Good to know." 

"Oh, my fucking God..." What had I just gotten myself into? 

"A whole heap of trouble," Bob said, answering the unspoken thought. "But you knew that already." 

I really should have run while I had the chance. 

A creak on the floorboards above made me freeze for a second. Just above, I could hear the wizard's voice calling my name. I rushed to the workbench again, strained to reach the shelf, and pushed the empty skull back into place just in time for the wizard to step foot on the first stair. Butterflies rioted in the pit of my stomach. 

"Anita, are you down there?" 

"Yeah," I said, voice a little breathier than usual. "I thought you might be down here." 

The wizard emerged and with a muttered, "Flickum Bicus" every candle in the place ignited, illuminating more magical paraphernalia I'd overlooked in my slapdash search. His smile was gentle, a little relieved. A small wave of desire rippled through me before I could lock it down. The spirit's avatar smirked at me from over Dresden's shoulder, where it had decided to loom. It made a speculative sound. I was regretting this more every second. 

"Careful. You could trip and hurt yourself. Again." 

"Don't worry about me, Dresden. I'm on top of things." 

"You could be on top of _him_ , you know," Bob mused. "He hasn't gotten laid in years. And seems like you could do with a good-" 

"Shut up," I muttered beneath my breath. 

"What was that?" 

"Nothing," I said, forcing a smile. "Let's get going. I'd like to finish this as soon as possible." 

"So you two can finish-" 

I shoved the spirit's mental awareness down as far as I could manage, though I knew it wouldn't last. He'd be back to torment me the moment my concentration wavered. I followed Dresden up the stairs, through his living room, and out the door, off to hunt vampires with a shabby wizard at the helm and a perverse spirit of intellect along for the ride. 

This day just kept getting better and better.


	12. Chapter 12

"So this is what it's like to ride shotgun!" Bob enthused. "I can't say I've ever been in person, so to speak. Automobiles were a novelty when your father last had me. And Harry never takes me interesting places. I have to ride along with the cat on the rare occasions he lets me out to roam. Opposable thumbs are so useful. I can't put any ones in a stripper's g-string with a paw, can I?" 

I was _definitely_ regretting my choice to swallow the spirit. Yes, it may have told Dresden and forced me to run. But I wasn't entirely sure this ride-along was worth my anonymity at this point. It wouldn't take a team of Wardens to end me. This thing was going to annoy me to death. I might end up swallowing my gun to escape the lewd litany the spirit was keeping up.

We were in the passenger's side of Dresden's VW Bug, on our way back to the precinct to go over the details with Murphy once more and formulate a plan. The spirit had draped itself across my lap, snuggling into me like I was a mall Santa and he was reciting a list of what he wanted for Christmas. 

"Can we go to the Gold Room Gentlemen's Club? There's a woman there named Vikki and she's got the greatest pair of-" 

"Stop it," I hissed softly, so as not to draw the wizard's attention.

"Tits," he finished proudly. "That I've ever seen. Though I must say...this new body of yours is nice, Mistress Kemmler. The bodacious boobage on display is-" 

I slammed the spirit's essence into the proverbial floorboards, hoping to shut it up for just a few seconds. The energy that made up Bob's spirit form bubbled merrily like a boiling pot and I got the distinct impression that was its way of laughing at me. The fear had fled, leaving only mischief in its wake. Perhaps I should have been insulted. All my vaunted evil and I could only terrify a mere spirit of intellect for five minutes.

"Did you say something, Detective?" Dresden said, glancing away from the clogged lanes of Chicago traffic. 

It was around three in the morning and the traffic really should have thinned by now. In any other city I'd lived in, things would have wound down sometime before the witching hour. Chicago wasn't an ordinary city. There was a confluence of ley lines nearby that drew things here, unconsciously or not. It was flush with people, its energies throbbing in constant time. Forget New York. Chicago was a city that never slept.

Under normal circumstances, I'd be about a third of the way through my shift. The Shellycob report was still sitting half-finished on my desk, awaiting a plausible explanation of the overkill we'd needed to produce to rescue the sorority sisters from Undertown. 

"Just talking to myself," I muttered.

The spirit and I could communicate mind to mind with our essences so closely tied together. He couldn't read my mind nor I his unless we tried. But my shields were very rusty, not having been used in almost three-quarters of a century. Mother had neglected to teach me them for a reason. All the better to make me prey for a White Court predator. I could think answers at the spirit without Dresden being the wiser. 

I leaned my injured arm in its cast on the Beetle's armrest and stared out at the night. Thick, heavy storm clouds pressed down on Chicago, threatening to soak us all to the skin for the third night in a row. I'd be grateful when the boiling summer months rolled around. At least then I wouldn't be in danger of sprouting mold from a sodden, neglected corner of my body. 

"Call it a play party gone wrong," Bob suggested, appearing on my lap again. "Spin it as a sex cult, if you like."

"I'm probably going to regret asking this but...what the hell are you talking about? What's a play party?"

"Play parties. Kink parties or BDSM parties if you like. Not hard to sell really, if you've got an ounce of your father's creativity. Rope marks? Inexpert shibari or suspension play. Bites or scratches? The heat of the moment. Tool marks? Take your pick. Ignore safe, sane, and consensual and things get dark fast. Add a cult element and you have your reason to go in guns blazing." 

I paused to consider that for a few seconds before grudgingly admitting the spirit's idea could have possibilities. It wouldn't be difficult to get Amber and her swarm of sorority sisters to agree to play along with the lie. Easier to say you'd been taking part in a dangerous sex cult than to admit you'd been kidnapped by oversized faerie crabs. 

"They're not usually the sort of crabs sorority girls are likely to end up with," Bob said with a snigger. 

"Thinking's a dangerous pastime," Dresden noted. "You look worried." 

"I _am_ worried, Dresden. There's a lot to be concerned about." 

This situation was spiraling maddeningly out of hand. Who knew where it could end up? I hadn't been in my position for long and already I had a White Court vampire stalking me, a wizard breathing down my neck, and a lewd spirit of intellect inside me. I was injured and still largely ignorant of what was going on. Why were ghosts and lemurs working so closely with a Scourge of Black Court vampires? I just couldn't make sense of that. Even with ill-intent fueling the power of their shades, ghosts were still limited when it came to interaction with the mortal plane. Most couldn't manifest and of those that could most of them didn't kill in this manner. 

Were all these children inclined toward ectomancy? Nicolette said Camden had seen her even before his death. There were three deaths so far we knew of. In a city the size of Chicago, it was possible there could be enough children to have some talent in that area. But how would the killer go about finding them in a city this size? Why would he want them dead? Why would they work with the vampires to kill said children? Most ghosts were drawn to ectomancers and necromancers simply so they could be seen and understood.

Bob's essence shivered somewhere deep inside of me and the bleedover of his emotions spurred involuntary reactions from the body. Gooseflesh strained my skin, my stomach flip-flopped, and my heart went double-time as suspicion and cool fear slopped over from the spirit. 

"What?" 

"It's....nothing to worry about yet. We should take a look at those cold case files Harry has been on about. I'll let you know if this is...what I believe it is." 

My teeth ground in frustration. "You could just tell me now."

The spirit's voice came out clipped when he spoke next. It was more Kemmler's assistant than Bob and that made me shudder all on my own. 

"Stop prying, _girl_. I do not like thinking of that time any more than you do. I try not to access it. I don't want to be what I was then. If the information is relevant I will relay it to you. Understood?" 

I resisted the urge to salute at the crisp tone. 

"Understood." 

The conversation had taken place at the speed of thought, so it probably didn't seem like I'd been silent all that long to Dresden. It had seemed longer to me, so I jumped when he spoke again, in a would-be casual tone.

"Well, you can strike Murphy off the list of things to agonize over. I'm taking the heat for this one, not you." 

That made me stop and crane my neck to look at him. "What do you mean?"

"I told Murphy you'd come to me with questions. It turned up a lead that ultimately got you hurt. She'll roast my ass for it, not yours." 

I stared at his striking profile, outlined as it was by the red stoplight and the strobing of a neon gas station sign. He really was handsome, in a scruffy sort of way. There was a solidness to him. Strength in the set of his jaw, something compelling in the dark eyes. Something dangerous too, but that wasn't really a deterrent. I tended to like my men dangerous. I spoke the question aloud because no matter how hard I thought about it, I found no answer. 

"Why are you doing this for me, Dresden?" 

He didn't know me. Hell, he may not even like me if we got a chance to get acquainted. He was endangering a paying job and his good name for...what?

"You said you didn't want Murphy to know. I'm not going to out you until you're ready, Detective. It's not right." 

"But it could help the case. Murphy will be pissed if she finds out later down the line." 

Harry shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. But you had a point earlier. As a practitioner, you're going to get strange looks from the normies. You're also getting side-eyed by our side too. Ectomancers don't get a fair shake. You don't get to choose what you're born with. You're a minor talent, so I don't think it'll interfere with your work too often. You should tell her if this sort of thing happens again, but I don't think you need your ass chewed when you're this hurt." 

"Thank you," I said quietly, dropping my gaze.

Harry Dresden was...incredibly kind. And ridiculously naive. 

"Stupid, you mean," Bob said, rolling his eyes. He was staring hopefully at the windows of an adult toy store. "He's blind where women are concerned. He's almost gotten himself killed on a number of occasions trying to help them out of scrapes. He started the war with the Red Court over his last girlfriend. They took her and he took her back, even if she did leave him in the end."

I boggled at the front dash, wanting to say something eloquent to that but coming up entirely blank. The war with the Red Court had been _Dresden's_ fault? I'd known a wizard had given insult to Duke Ortega and that one of his most beloved lieutenants had been killed. Even on the fringes of the community, I heard of the more outrageous things going on. 

He'd initiated a war to retrieve his girlfriend? That was so ridiculously short-sighted it almost made me laugh. I sobered almost immediately when the implications really hit me. I could sneak things past Dresden simply by being an attractive woman. He'd be inclined to believe me. But that meant that my mother or any number of wicked elements in the supernatural world could do the same. 

Someone needed to start looking after this idiot before he got himself killed.

"You see why I don't want him near you," Bob said. "He'll never see it coming." 

"I'm not going to hurt him. I'm just trying to live out a little humdrum existence. I'll keep away from your boss as much as humanly possible."

"That's not the problem, Julianna." 

He glanced sideways at his boss. I caught Dresden staring at me just before the light turned green. The car trundled forward and Dresden redirected the stare to the road. Still, I'd seen it. There was something in those dark eyes. Contemplative interest. A spark of something a little lascivious too. But it wasn't just the look a man gave a woman he wanted to fuck. I got the impression he really might care.

"The problem," Bob continued. "Is that I don't think _he_ wants to stay away from _you._ "


	13. Chapter 13

After reading Dresden the riot act from the front of her new fuel-efficient car, a process which had taken roughly fifteen minutes, Murphy drove us a short distance to a hotel. It could only generously be rated three stars and seemed to be the sort of place to sport a number of seedy elements. Elements that would not appreciate the arrival of a pair of police detectives and their wizard companion. 

The only thing it had in its favor was a conference room, and that was where we were heading. Murphy intended to spare me a grilling tonight, dragging Dresden and I to a no-tell motel to look over the evidence she could scrounge up on short notice. She grumbled that a good portion of it was now digitized, which made it damn near impossible for Dresden to look them over. She, Zerbrowski, and O’Toole would be handling their share back at the station and I’d been ordered to call if we found anything or ran into trouble. 

I was fairly sure that if we ran into trouble, my cellphone was toast. There’d be too much magic in the air for it to survive for very long. Dresden’s or mine, it wouldn’t really matter. I promised anyway because sometimes false assurances were better than no assurances at all. 

The conference room was small, as things went. About the size of my apartment’s living room. I seized a folder from the top of the stack, brushing a fine layer of dust from the top. A creased black and white photo had been pinned to the front of the manila folder, with the name ‘Elinor Seddon, age 8,’ printed neatly beneath it.

She’d been small for eight, a white dress with a high, ruffled collar swallowing most of her petite frame. Her hair was done up in the loose, tumbling curls that would be popularized over a decade later by Shirley Temple. It was difficult to tell from the faded photo, but I thought she might have been blonde.

The photo was done in sepia tones and a quick peek into the file confirmed it was taken not too long after Nicolette Seaton’s death. Nicolette had been murdered in September of 1912. Elinor had been killed in October of the same year, very near All Hallows Eve. The back of my neck prickled with unease and, inside me, the spirit writhed in nervous agitation. It was not unlike having a reticulated python curled in my abdomen. The weird, slithering sensation made my stomach lurch, and I was grateful I hadn’t eaten anything since waking at ten. 

“This has something to do with my father, doesn’t it?” I hissed in Bob’s general direction.

Why else would the spirit react so violently? It also tracked with everything I’d observed. The barrier was thinnest on Halloween, some parts of the Nevernever slopping out into the mortal world to wreak havoc. It was a time when the fabric of reality could be easily rent apart with the intent to allow evils to walk upon the earth. 

“Not necessarily. If they’ve got what I suspect they’ve got, time of year won’t matter much. It’s just as effective in April as it is in October.”

“What is it?” I asked, trying not to snap at the spirit. I’d rather jam my finger into an old-school pencil sharpener and give it a few revolutions before I experienced the slithering sensation twine through my insides again. 

The spirit hesitated, poised nervously on the edge of speech. The tension was almost physically painful, a weight on my mind that couldn’t be assuaged with caffeine or aspirin. I took to flicking through Elinor’s file to distract from the taut stretch of silence and moved on to Isiah McGrath, who’d been killed December 24th, 1912. The stories seemed almost identical. The children would disappear and be found hours or days later with bits missing.

I could just picture someone finding Isaiah’s bloody body half-buried in a drift of snow. Seven years old and killed on Christmas Eve. God, what a fucking nightmare. There was something horribly ironic about it. Something that would have tickled the festering, maggot-filled abscess my father called a heart.

“Crumhorn,” Bob blurted. 

“Gesundheit.” 

“No,” he said with a bite of impatience. “I believe one of your father’s artifacts is to blame for the disappearances. Do you know what a crumhorn is?” 

“Obviously not,” I said dryly. 

I kept track of Dresden in my periphery, half-expecting him to catch me conversing with the spirit. Ordinary conversation included gesticulations and facial tics. Locking my face into impassivity took effort. 

“I know you were largely raised by your mother and then spent most of your young adulthood in France but try to strain your memory, Julianna. You have to remember some German.” 

Vaguely. I’d honestly tried to fortify myself against any memories of that time. Occasionally, in dreams, they scaled the walls I’d built around them and sacked the castle, leaving me wracked with guilt upon waking. 

“Krummhorn. High German meaning... bent horn?”

“Very good,” he said, inclining his mental head, a teacher acknowledging a bright pupil. “The crumhorn is an instrument in the woodwind family. It was recovered from a hidden compartment in the burial vault found in what was then Prussia. It belonged to a man named Johannes Radecki. He’d been a wizard in life and made himself rather infamous when he modified his crumhorn to cast a large dragnet of shallow neuromancy to lure children away from their homes.” 

I sat up straighter, eyes bugging. Oh my God. 

“The Pied Piper!” I blurted out loud. 

How could I have missed it? The victims were children, often lured away from the safety of their homes to be killed. One of the vampires had called the other “Pip” for Christ’s sake. Short for Piper, no doubt.

“Your father saw an opportunity and located the crumhorn, adding his own touches to the instrument. It can snare both the living and the dead. Sane ghosts are more easily controlled. I imagine lemurs join in to prey on the souls of the murdered children if they can catch them in time. He aborted the project when the White Council began looking into his affairs. I believe it was the last thing he did before the ritual in Anadyr.” 

“The night I died,” I muttered darkly, thankfully keeping the gripe inside my head.

Dresden lifted his head from the folder he’d been examining and shot me a quizzical look. 

“Did you say something, Detective?” 

I took a deep breath, fighting the urge to rub at my forehead. Nothing short of expelling the spirit was going to cure the headache. Time to cook up another half-truth. I had the sinking feeling that I’d be spinning enough yarn to make an afghan while I was around Dresden. 

“I was going over the files, dipping my toe into some amateur psychology, and it got me thinking. Serial killers seem to have a victim preference they stick to. These cases were originally assumed to be the victims of a string of child molesters. But pedophiles still have gender and racial preferences. Hell, even different ages of attraction. The only thing they have in common is youth and sudden, mysterious disappearances. And that got me thinking about-“

“The Pied Piper,” Dresden finished. He’d also sat up straighter, sudden, feverish light coming into his eyes. “That’s not actually a bad theory. He was a wizard of the White Council at one time. He was executed for breaking the first, third, and fourth laws. They never recovered his pipe, though. Question is, what would Black Court vampires need the pipe for if that’s really what’s going on here?” 

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Black Court vampires, while suffering from a glut of weaknesses, were physically the strongest and most dangerous of the vampire courts. Even with the modified crumhorn, they couldn’t use the ghosts as lures to bring prey in during the daytime. Most noncorporeal beings had an aversion to sunlight and crossing thresholds.

“A limitation that can be bypassed if they were possessing something or someone,” Bob pointed out. 

“Like what?” 

Bob was still mulling the question over when the acrylic conference room door let out a shrill, tortured sound as something large rent its surface. It sounded like an industrial saw buzzing against sheet metal, a sound so sharp it made my ears ring, and every hair on my body stand on end. 

The snarl that issued from the other side of the door sounded like a chainsaw being revved. Dresden was on his feet in an instant, dragging me with him. My legs got tangled in the chair and I had to kick myself loose, but not before I banged my shin badly on one of the metal legs. Dresden’s grip on my upper arm was almost bruising, but there was no time for apologies, only action. I didn’t think he realized that his grip was vise-like on my already injured arm. 

He shoved me between the conference room wall and his back, twirling his staff to face the threat. Sigils carved along the length began to glow, and a stream of blue sparks trailed from the focus on his wrist. The runoff was a waste of magical energy and something he ought to correct. One day that lost energy could be the difference between winning and losing a fight. 

I doubted he’d appreciate the critique at the moment. 

The door burst apart, sending shrapnel in every direction, and three enormous black shapes filled the gap, almost climbing over one another in their bid to enter the room first. Each shape was about the size of a Shetland Pony, rippling with muscle, and reeked of stagnant water and fetid meat. They moved on all fours, claw-tipped hands and feet ripping holes the size of ping-pong balls in the conference room carpet. Their ropy gray tails lashed the air with whip-like cracks. Beady black eyes fixed on us and their thin lips pulled back to reveal yellowing teeth. 

“Like that,” Bob supplied unhelpfully. 

Then, with no signal I could identify, the hulking, mutant rats lunged forward, vaulting the conference room table, sending papers flying in every direction, claws raking toward Dresden’s face. 


End file.
